


Kapitel des Kükens

by JoCarroll



Series: Princess Tutu: The Untold Story [2]
Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2019-10-06 08:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 96,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17342135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarroll/pseuds/JoCarroll
Summary: Once upon a time there was a man who died while writing a story.  The prince and the raven from the man’s story escaped from the pages and did battle.  It ended with the prince taking out his own heart and sealing the raven away by using a forbidden power.  In a certain town, the prince who had lost his heart met a duck.  Because of her love for the prince the duck turned into a princess and gathered together the lost shards of his heart.  The prince gradually regained his feelings and at long last he even regained the feeling of love, and they lived happily ever after.Or did they?  After all, the princess is fated to turn into a speck of light and vanish the moment she tells the prince of her love for him.





	1. Die Rabe

**Author's Note:**

> This work is the second book in an original novelization/reimagination of the Princess Tutu Anime originally written by Michiko Yokote, with some elements adapted from the manga written by Mizuo Shinonome.

_**The Raven** _

     “Checkmate.”  
     The word punctuated her life.  
     All around her the board was laid out, bits of the pieces that made up the grisly game scattered across the checkerboard tiles.  Some of those pieces she had taken.  Some had been taken from her.  Now at last on the far end of the board she made her final play only to be played in return.  He’d planned it this way, the raven king.  Planned to trap the swan prince, planned to take the white queen.  It all became blazingly clear in her mind on the razor-sharp end of the poniard skewering her chest.  
     “NOO!”  
     The white prince’s cry broke her already broken heart while the gloating face of the raven king sneered down on her.  
     Was this her fault?  She’d driven them here, after all.  It was her crusade.  Her rescue mission.  Her vainglorious belief that everyone could be saved.  But that wasn’t true, was it?  She’d seen the white knight fall.  She’d seen the black queen flee.  Blood coated the playing board, red against the black and white, slick underfoot.  They’d waded through seas of it to get here.  The blood of the innocent and condemned alike, both equally crimson and indistinguishable in death.  
     “Did you really think you could beat me, _little duck.”_  The raven king’s whispered words slithered over her skin insidiously.  
     She wanted to reach out.  Wanted to strike at him, but she couldn’t.  Strength bled out of her over that blade.  Pain paralyzed her in place.  Her whole being was held suspended by the poniard protruding from her chest.  She couldn’t breath past the pressure.  Couldn’t inhale.  Couldn’t exhale.  Couldn’t escape.  
     “Yours wasn’t the heart that I wanted,” his whisper went on, oozing like poison in her mind.  “But I’ll gladly take it all the same.”  
     She gasped as the poniard pulled free, releasing her on a wave of pain.  Like a marionette released from so many strings, she crumpled to the ground in a graceless heap.  That’s all she was in the end, wasn’t it?  A doll for the raven king to control.  She’d danced to his tune, answered to the pull of her strings, and here they were on this board of death—a world about to fall to his ultimate control.  
     _My fault,_ she thought desperately.  _All my fault._  
     Hands clutched at her, pain ripped through her on a fresh wave of fire as she was rolled over into the white prince’s arms.  His face hovered over hers, pale and desperate, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.  “No,” he murmured, sounding as broken as she surely was.  
     A laugh shook the light that glowed in the air around them.  “She was just a pawn, my Prince.  You’re the one who tried to make her more.”  
     _Don’t listen to him,_ she wanted to say, _his words are anathema with no cure._ But words, like breath, wouldn’t leave her lips.  
     “Too bad her sacrifice meant nothing in the end.”  
     Tears burned her eyes.  All she wanted to do was save him.  Save the white prince.  But the raven king was right.  In the end she had failed.  She had given her life to spare him his, and this was her reward.  The raven king turned away.  Having won the game, he quit the board and he ascended to his throne in triumph.  
     The world was starting to fade out.  Black and white and red were bleeding of color.  Grey replaced it all.  It stained her skin, flowing like a river of ink over the tiles beneath her.  Her body felt heavy.  Too heavy to lift.  Too heavy to live.  She struggled to keep her eyes open, fixing her gaze on the only source of color and light left to her here at the end.  The white prince’s eyes shown down on her, a source of heat all on their own, filled with molten gold and a terrible emotion she feared to name.            
     _Emotion._ She was supposed to have power over that.  Over the flowing and the formless, the growing and the changing.  She had power over nothing now.  Everything that was power, that was _her_ had been ripped away and was slowly effervescing into the ether, loosed from its anchor within her.  Whatever tie she’d had to it was tenuous now.  Nearly gone.  
     “My little duck,” he choked the words out through tears, “what have you done?”  
     She tried to speak, tried to breathe through the pressure holding her down.  “I’m sorry,” she managed to gasp, and the sound of her voice was a weak thing he had to bend nearer to hear.  “I didn’t listen.”  She should have listened.  She should have run when she could, but if she had…  
     “Shh,” his voice soothed her.  
     Her eyes fluttered closed.  _Worth it._ She thought.  She had stopped him.  Saved him from destroying himself, if only for one brief moment in time.  She only wished she hadn’t destroyed herself to do so.  _Still worth it…  I think._ Fear collected in her chest, pooling in a warm puddle just over her heart.  The raven king had won, but his rule was uncemented.  If the white prince shattered his heart now…  “Please stay with me,” she begged.  The words were wet.  She didn’t recognize her own voice.  
     “I’m right here, little one,” he crooned.  It sounded wrong.  Strained.  Heartbroken.  
     He didn’t understand.  He thought she was dying.  She _was_ dying, but that wasn’t why she was asking.  She tried to feel for his hand, tried to squeeze his fingers but her body wasn’t working right.  She’d stopped him once.  Stopped him from shattering his heart.  Love and a fool’s desperation had driven her then—was it only seconds ago?  Or hours maybe?  How long did it take for a life to end?  But now she knew the truth.  Knew the terrible price of the deed.  She learned it on the ragged edge of that word, on the needle-pointed tip of that blade.   
     _Checkmate._  
     She wanted to tell him what she’d learned but she couldn’t feel him anymore.  The world was fuzzing away and she struggled to open her eyes.  It was a herculean effort, and when she did, everything was grey and hazy.  “Don’t leave me!” she cried out in panic.  Only it sounded more like a whisper.  
     Something wet hit her face.  
     Tears.  
     He was weeping for her.  
     “Please,” she gasped.  She wasn’t sure what she was asking for anymore.  Her mind felt as weighted as her body.  She reached up.  She could see her hand, but she couldn’t feel it.  Three fingers coated in red.  She touched his cheek, leaving bloody streaks.  “Please…” the word was a dying whisper.  _Please smile_ , she begged.  
     She wanted that smile, that beauty.  She wanted its grace to bear her on into the land of death.  
     He didn’t smile.  He couldn’t.  Tears were streaming down his face.  
     “My little duck,” he murmured over and again, “my little duck.”  
     “Please smile for me…” the words had no weight, no volume.  Her lips moved but no sound came out.  _Smile for me, my prince, just one last time_ …  The fading world went black and she sighed in resignation at this fate.  At least the pain would end.  
     She drifted in darkness and pain and it could have been seconds, and it could have been years.  When she opened her eyes again, she saw the world at an oblique angle.  She saw the checkerboard set up, saw the pieces scattered across.  White and black squares stained with red.  And there was the raven king in all his gory glory.  And there was the white prince bent down in defeat.  At his heart was a sword.  
     “No—” she gasped, reaching toward him without thinking.  Reaching _everything_ toward him.  
     “For you, my heart…”  
     The sword plunged down.  
     The world went white.  
     Then gold.  
     Then red.  
     Then black.  
     She opened her eyes.  Blinking, the little white duck shook her feathered head, sending droplets of water everywhere in the pearly pre-dawn light.  She could still feel the phantom arms around her.  She could taste the salt of tears.  But it was a dream.  All around the world was shrouded in the mist of morning.  There was no marble checkerboard, no white queen dying.  _It’s a dream._  
     Still the words weren’t a comfort because dreams could be real.  And stories could too.  _Like the Prince and the Raven._  
     Wait?  
     What?  
     A sound rustled in the reeds at the edge of her pond, and her eyes tracked to the sound.  There he stood.  The white prince from her dream.  The prince from the story.  He stepped out onto the surface of the water, stretched his arms wide, and started to dance.   
     _Wait?  Haven’t I done this before?_  
     She stared with wide eyes at the hazy figure of the prince through the fog, pirouetting atop the perfectly still crystalline waters.  Despite the weird déjà vu, she couldn’t help the sigh that passed her little black bill.  _He’s so handsome._  
     A ray of light pierced the fog, glinting off the gold of his crown and her blue eyes went wide.  _Oh that’s right!_ she recalled.  _The prince got to go back to being a prince!  And I…_ her thoughts trailed off as horror slowly dawned.  
     “Quack!”  
     _I just went back to being a duck again!_ But how?  She didn’t remember turning into a duck.  Why couldn’t she remember?  What happened?  And why wasn’t the water turning her back into a girl as it normally did?  She looked down at once, panic suffusing her very being, and easily spotted the glow of the tiny red jewel which gave her the power to be human.  
     As if her recognition had triggered it, a red light flared all around her and a strange sensation swept over her skin.  Prickling, tingling, hot and cold, then the flash flare of something not quite pain burning through her to the bones, and the little white duck wasn’t a duck anymore.  
     “I—” Aria’s chest hitched at the sound of her own voice.  She was standing on the water’s surface, staring down at feet clad in snowy white pointe shoes, at a gossamer gown of palest frost.  Slowly her chin tipped up and she saw the prince, standing across from her on the pond, a smile on his face.  Without even willing her feet to move she started toward him.  
     He stretched a hand to her, twirling it with impossible and effortless grace through the air as he held it out for her to take.  Her own hand, as light as a feather on the wind, grasped his fingers with the softest touch.  He firmed his grip, pulling her to him with a sharp little jerk that landed her in his arms, and she only barely managed not to squeak.  
     _He was holding her!_  
     Not when she was Princess Tutu, but here, now, when she was only Aria!  “I don’t understand,” she murmured, tilting her head back to look him in the eye.  Only the eyes she saw weren’t the lovely amber she knew so well.  
     They were green.  So deeply green that in the shadows of the morning they almost looked black.  
     Aria jerked away from the arms which held her.  “Fakhir?”  
     It wasn’t the prince in his crown and doublet who was holding her.  It was Fakhir, the knight of the story, battered and bloody in clothes stained from battle.  His skin was pale, his eyes bruised.  He dropped his arms to his sides, then brought them together in front of him, fists clenched, his wrists crossed low over his torso.  
     “Wait…” she breathed, the air freezing in her lungs.  “Th-that’s the mime for death!”  She took a step toward him, reaching out as if she could physically snatch him back from the brink.  “Fakhir!”  
     He fell away from her, her fingers just barely snagging against his sleeve but finding no purchase.  
     “Fakhir!” she screamed again, watching in terror as he disappeared into void.

 

     “NOO!!”  Aria sat bolt upright in her bed, smashing her head against the low eaves with a startled squawk.  An icy hot pain seared through her body, the sensation riding along her bones as though they were being overheated, and then flash frozen in the span of a heartbeat.  She lost her balance and tumbled sideways off of her bunk.  Transforming into a duck on the way to the ground, she hit the floor in her feathered form and lay there dazedly staring at the bare bones of the ceiling over her head.  
     _Oh good, that was a dream._  
     The thought was only half-relieved.  She had, after all, just turned into a duck and fallen out of bed.  With a groan she turned her head to the window, staring out at the bright blue sky beyond and the birds flitting across it in the careless freedom of flight.  For one real moment she was jealous of them.  Then confusion set in.   
     _A dream about Fakhir?_ That was definitely a first.  Why would she dream about him?  She hadn’t even seen him in a week.  Not since that night.  That night… the night she _had_ thought he died.  Maybe that was it!   
     Only a week ago she’d met with Krähe in the tunnels beneath Goldkrone Towne.  They’d competed there for the prince’s heart, and in the end Mytho had chosen her.  But between finding Krähe at the underground lake and saving Mytho, Fakhir had battled the crow warriors and though he succeeded in destroying the prince’s sword so that he couldn’t shatter his heart, he’d also fallen into the lake and almost drowned.  It wasn’t until they’d met with him at the kriegerbrunnen in the shadow of St. Godfrey’s spire, that Aria had known he’d survived the fight.  
     _Fakhir,_ she breathed a sigh of relief.  _I’m glad he’s all right.  I wonder where he’s been—_  
     The little duck’s eyes went wide.  _Fakhir!?  What the hell am I thinking about!_ Panicking, she scrambled to her feet and ran to the side table where her pitcher of water sat.  One good thwack against the rickety leg of the table with her bill and it collapsed.  She really didn’t have nice things.  Even the stuff the school provided was shite.   
     The pitcher pitched off the table’s edge, and a wall of water cascaded over the little white duck.  An instant later Aria lay on her back on the wet floor, the now-empty pitcher rolling away toward the dark corner.  “It was only a dream,” she assured herself.  “Right?  Right.  Only a dream.”  _Great, now I’m talking to myself._ Her eyes drifted back to the window and she again noted the birds collecting outside.  _Oh shoot!_  
     Aria scrambled to her feet and grabbed for the bag of bread and her washing bowl, not bothering with a robe or a blanket to cover her nakedness as she threw the window open wide.  “Sorry to keep you!” she cried out as she filled the bowl full of crumbs amidst a rush of wings.     
     She laughed at the antics of her feathered friends.  “All you ever think about is food!  Of course, it’s all you have to think about.  It must be easy.”  She sighed wistfully, leaning an elbow on the windowsill and resting her chin in her palm.  “Hey, did you guys know?  I’m Aria, but I’m also Princess Tutu.  I’m a premier danseuse who rescues the prince...” she trailed off.  What was she thinking?  That story was too fantastic even for her avian confidants to understand.  
     They blinked up at her with beady little eyes.  
     “Oh well, that’s okay,” she smiled, shaking her head and retreating back into her room.  She glanced down with a frown at the puddle that spilled across her floor.  “I should dry that,” she mused absently.  
     Before she could bother with finding a towel, a pounding rattled her door in its frame, shaking down dust from the ceiling.  It sounded like someone was striking it rapidly with both fists.  In a moment a voice joined the pounding.  “Panic, panic!”  
     “Lillie?” Aria gasped, looking around frantically for smoke or something to merit her friend’s alarm.  
     “Move really fast!” Lillie continued to shout, “Seriously rush!”  
     A lone note rang out over the world from the direction of St. Godfrey’s and Aria’s face went white when she realized what time it was.  “No way, am I already late?”  She ran for her clothes trunk, slipped in the puddle of water, and ended up flat on her back.  
     “She doesn’t have to panic _that_ much,” she heard Piqué’s voice chide Lillie through the door.  “She’s got a half hour before class.  Anyway!” she called the last word more loudly for Aria to hear.  “We’re going on ahead!  Just wanted to make sure you were up!”  
     “Ugh,” Aria groaned.  “I have idiots for friends.”  This wasn’t building up to be a good day.

      Five minutes later Aria was hurrying out of her room, her socks—hopefully clean—in her mouth, the straps of her shoes looped over a finger, one arm haphazardly through the wrong arm of her jacket while she buttoned her blouse.  The hallways were empty, everyone else already having been up getting dressed, brushing their hair, putting on makeup, and getting breakfast like normal students.  Meanwhile, she was rushing barefoot down the stairs taking them two and three at a time, with the coppery curls of her hair cascading loosely over her shoulders and swinging down to her waist while she struggled to put on her jacket with her hands full of shoes.  
     She hit the door to the dorm, studiously ignoring the mirror in the foyer—knowing fully what horror waited in it should she chance to look—threw it unceremoniously open, and stumbled out into the bright light of morning.  
     “A week ago I faced an army of crows in an underground lake, danced on water, saved the prince, and yet here I am—Gold Crown Academy’s own Ugly Duck—as if nothing has changed.”  She huffed these words out on a frustrated breath as she tugged on her socks while limping over the gravel walkway.  She paused her hopping long enough to look up at the oriel window of the girl’s dorm.   
     Aria hadn’t seen Rue since that night.  It was a shock discovering that the premiere danseuse of Gold Crown, and the girl Aria was starting to consider a friend, was actually Krähe the princess of crows and Princess Tutu’s sworn enemy.  She wondered where Rue had gone after the transpirings at that lake.  She wondered if she was still Princess Krähe.  She wondered all this while still walking, staring up at the window, and nearly jumped out of her skin when hands came out of nowhere and landed on her shoulders.  
     “Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping around to come eye-to-eye with the blue-blazered chest she’d nearly walked into.  She tilted her chin up and her gaze met golden eyes.  
     “Good morning, Aria,” Mytho murmured.  
     “Oh!” she quite brilliantly gasped again.  “G-good morning Mytho.”  
     A flash of her dream drifted back to her.  _Golden eyes shining down.  Pressure on her chest.  Too much blood—_ a white light stabbed into her mind, washing the image away.  She scrunched up her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, wincing against the sensation.  
     “Too much light in your eyes?”  
     The disdainful voice drew her attention, and Aria looked past Mytho to see Fakhir standing just behind him.  “Oh!” she gasped again.  
     “Very eloquent,” he muttered under his breath in a tone she clearly wasn’t meant to hear.  
     Her wide-eyed stare immediately narrowed into a glare.  “I was going to ask if you were feeling better, but I can see now that terminal misanthropy doesn’t have a cure.”  
     Mytho frowned at her comeback.  Honestly, she’d forgotten for a second in her irritation, that the prince was still standing there.  She wasn’t normally this rude, but the dark-haired premier danseur of Gold Crown was a special case.  
     Fakhir’s lips twitched.  “To answer your question, I was starting to feel better, but seeing your face has caused fresh stabs of cynicism.  
     Aria growled.  
     Mytho quickly waded in to mediate.  “She was worried because you were absent from school for a whole week,” he chided, giving her another silent admonishing look for her behavior—though he was gentlemanly enough not point it out.  
     Fakhir threw an almost-innocent look her way.  
     While Mytho’s back was turned, she stuck at out her tongue.  
     “It isn’t kind of you to talk that way,” Mytho ignorantly went on.  Then he turned his back on Fakhir.  “Please don’t mind him, Aria.  Will you at least stay friends with me?”  
     The earnest expression on his face immediately banished her irritation.   
     “You’re the only friend whom I can tell everything.”  
     Immediately the last traces of irritation soured into guilt.  “S-sure,” she stammered uncertainly.  Shame socked her in the stomach, _Tell_ everything _?  I’m hiding the fact that I’m Princess Tutu from Mytho._ Which seemed pointless.  It appeared everyone who mattered knew the truth already.  Everyone _except_ Mytho.  _And the fact that I’m a duck too!_ Only Fakhir knew that part, but it still felt like lying.  _Am I being unfair?_ She chewed her lip nervously. _I have to tell him, don’t I?  But—_  
     Mytho cocked his head at her long silence, “Are you alright?”  
     “Um,” she hesitated, “Well the truth is, the truth—” she nervously knotted the fabric of her skirt in her hands, twisting it until the poor sodden material was ruined.  
     Fakhir’s eyes narrowed as he watched her discomfort.  “Princess Tutu!” he called out loudly.  
     Aria’s eyes went huge in her face, and a squawk escaped her unprepared throat.  Pain sliced through her body and the world around went whirling by in a blaze of color.  Fakhir moved smoothly, blocking her and turning Mytho just as she transformed into a duck, landing in a dark pile of clothes right by the pas de deux fountain.  
     _Damn him!_ she swore uncharitably, struggling up and out through the collar of her blouse and shaking out her feathers.  She got a good eyeful of Fakhir’s calf and looked up, up, up, up to see him pointing into the sky over the boy’s dorm.  
     “I see her flying,” Fakhir exclaimed nonsensically.  “Over there!”  
     “What?” Mytho murmured in bafflement.  
     “Oh, hold on, maybe it’s a crocodile, what do you think?”  
     She stared at him.  _Maybe he lost his mind?_  Then her attention was snagged by the rapidly motioning hand he held behind his back.  He was telling her to hide.  
     _Oh cripes!_ she looked at the pile of clothes, then down at her own useless wings.  _What am I going to do?_  
     “There’s nothing there,” Mytho was saying.  “Princess Tutu and a crocodile are totally different.”  
     Fakhir, took a small step back, nudging the pile of her clothes with his foot.   
     The little duck hopped off the pile and darted around the fountain as he kicked them out of sight.  She huffed indignantly.  _He does know that I have to wear those again, doesn’t he?  And now he’s gone and gotten them all dirty!_  
     Mytho finally turned and shot his roommate an odd look.  “Fakhir?  _Are_ you feeling okay?”  
     “You’re right,” Fakhir mumbled, “I probably just imagined it.  Though I could have sworn I saw a flying cow.”  
     Mytho’s eyebrows went up, “A cow?”  
     “It’s nothing,” Fakhir waved it aside and sat down on the edge of the fountain, blocking the little duck and her clothes even further from sight.  
     She was tempted to bite his ankle.  
     “You’re not making sense.”  Mytho glanced around at the suddenly empty courtyard.  “That’s odd, where’s Aria?”  
     “Who knows?” Fakhir shrugged, “It’s likely my comments put her off, so she went on ahead.”  
     “Yeah,” Mytho acknowledged with a sigh.  “You need to treat girls more nicely Fakhir.”  
     The little duck gave in to temptation and bit his ankle.  
     He jerked his foot and looked back at her with a glare that almost covered the smirk pulling at his lips.  “Say Mytho,” he muttered, “what do you think of Princess Tutu?”  
     Mytho joined him on the fountain’s edge, “That’s rather sudden.”  
     Fakhir shrugged again.  “She always disappears after she returns a piece of your heart, right?  Don’t you want to know who she is?”  
     “Sure I do,” Mytho murmured, “But maybe right now it’s best for me not to know.  Because I’m certain there will come a day when she will be ready to tell me.  Right now, I’m thinking more about how I need to get all of my feelings back as soon as I can with help from Princess Tutu.”  
     Surprised at his words, the little duck moved a bit closer.  _Mytho…_  
     “You’ll help me too, won’t you Fakhir?”  
     “Well I am supposed to be a knight.”  
     The prince’s face lit up, “I knew I could count on you.”  Mytho stood, determination tightening his features.  “And when that’s finished, I’ll go back into the story.”  
      _Mytho!_  
     “Is that truly what you want?”  There was an edge to the words.  
     “Yes, as the story’s prince, I belong there.”  
     Fakhir looked away, “I see then.”  He got to his feet too.  “Shall we go?  Mr. Catt will be angry at us if we’re late.”  
     “Okay,” Mytho acquiesced, immediately starting toward the gates.  
     Fakhir glanced over his shoulder at the little white duck in her hiding place.  “You give me a lot of trouble,” he muttered so only she could hear.  
     “Quack!” she exclaimed out loud.  But in the language of birds she was swearing him out.  _What are you talking about?  It’s all your fault!  You can just be late and have Mr. Catt get mad at you!_  
     Except he’d staged that whole thing, hadn’t he?  So she could hear what Mytho really thought?  Her eyes darted to the pile of her dusty clothes and she gnashed her bill.  _Nope, still mad.  Let him be late.  
_     The bell of St. Godfrey’s rang again, not a chime this time but a full-on peal to signal the hour.  Her blue eyes went wide.  _I’m late!_

***

     From somewhere between the planes of life and death, the spirit of the storyteller leaned forward, bracing his spectral elbows on the arms of his ethereal rocking chair.  He narrowed his eyes at the growing cracks on the flowing surface of the sands of time, and the pretty pictures of careless youth reflected back from the thinning planes of glass.  “What peaceful days these are,” he muttered discontentedly.  “What peaceful, peaceful days.”  
     A smile stretched grotesquely across his face, and between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he twirled an ebony feather back and forth.  Back and forth.  
     “Ah, but I wonder, how long can such peaceful days last?”  He threw back his head and cackled out a hoarse laugh.  “You may have bested my crow, little duck, but you haven’t even met my raven.”  His grin widened manically.  “Yet.”


	2. Die Zentanzten Schuhe

_**The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes** _

 

     Fakhir glanced over at Mytho as they stretched at the barre in preparation for morning classes.  Something had been bothering him about his roommate since his return with Aria from the underground lake, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.  At times, like this morning in the courtyard, he was completely normal—or as normal as a fairy tale prince missing half his heart could be.  At times like right now he was… off.  
     Mytho was staring through the window absently, his eyes fixed in the middle distance.  This wasn’t the normal blank stare Fakhir had seen a thousand times before Princess Tutu started returning the shards of his heart.  If he had to guess, Fakhir would almost think that Mytho was lost in his own head, and not in a good way.  A sickly black feeling he couldn’t quite name crawled up his chest every time he saw that look on his friend’s face, and he’d been seeing it a lot this past week.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was in the offing, like a storm building in the distance.  
     A sound startled the hushed susurrus of the room, loud and jangling.  A single note struck on the keyboard at the far end of the studio.  Fakhir craned his neck around as the sound of a second note—the same key again—followed the first.  Mr. Catt stood at the piano, one hand tucked behind his back, striking the same key again and again and again in a disturbingly measured fashion.  Students were getting nervous, jumping at each new note.  
     Idly curious as to the source of Mr. Catt’s apparent agitation, Fakhir glanced around.  Attendance in the room seemed… light.  A number of students had clearly taken advantage of one of the last few nice days of the summer to skip.  Included in the number, he noted with a tiny bit of self-satisfaction, was Aria.  Also included was Rue.  
     “Looks like Mr. Catt is pretty fricking angry.”  
     More heads swung around in the opposite direction now, a few shocked expressions showing at the use of almost-profanity.  
     Fakhir noticed one of Aria’s little friends, at least he thought the girl was one of the ones he always saw Aria with, talking to another blonde girl a short distance away.  She was chewing her lip worriedly.  
     “This is great,” the other girl whispered loudly.  She didn’t look worried.  She looked unnervingly excited.  “I hope Duck comes soon.  That would be perfect!”  
     He narrowed his eyes at them.  If these were Aria’s friends, she… needed new friends.  
     The studio door squeaked as another note was struck, reverberating around the room and clearly fraying the already frayed nerves of the students warming up for practice.  A single ballet flat appeared in the shadows beyond the barely opened door, then a hand upon the doorjamb, and then a recognizable red head.  
     “What an eyesore,” he sighed.  The poor girl had already looked like something the cat dragged in this morning in the courtyard, and that was before she’d dressed out in the threadbare, bleached leotard which made her stand out like a sore thumb.  And he wasn’t even sure what she’d done to make her hair look like _that_.  In a room full of ballet students who put such painstaking effort into their looks, Aria was a beacon of chaos and disarray.  A week ago, Fakhir would have found the lack of synchronicity an annoying distraction.  Now it was almost refreshing.  
     His thoughts froze.  
      _What.  The.  Actual.  Hell.  What am I thinking about?_   And why was he even thinking about the girl when he had something real to worry over?   
     Fakhir cast another dark look at Mytho who was still staring out the window with a weird look on his face.  He had one pale hand on his chest, just over his heart, his fingers almost claws.  Fakhir couldn’t tell if the prince was trying to channel the missing pieces of his heart.   Or trying to pluck out the ones already returned.  The uncertainty disturbed him.  
     “Miss Arima,” Mr. Catt’s voice echoed loudly through the studio as Aria tried to creep to her place at the barre.  He turned his head barely a fraction in her direction.  “I presume?”  
     Aria immediately froze in place, her spine going straight.  Fear pumped off her in waves and she started to tremble.  Also immediately she began to babble, something he noticed she did when she was unnerved, or uncomfortable, or not paying attention, or—well—whenever she opened her mouth.  
     “Yes sir!  I’m so sorry I’m late, you see I left the dorm at the normal time, well almost the normal time, I had to dry up a lake in my room first and that took a minute, but then I left and started straight here, but on my way I saw a crocodile and a cow flying in the sky, and—”  
     Fakhir caught himself smiling at her excuse, and quickly dashed the expression off his face with a scowl before anyone could see.  
     Miss Arima,” Mr. Catt cut off her monologue before it could get any more interesting.  “As usual I see you act like you own the place.  In fact, I’d have to say you act exactly like the students in the advanced class.”  
     A preening figure to his left caught his eye and Fakhir saw his pas de deux partner lifting her eyebrows scornfully at the comparison.  
     “Oh, no sir,” Aria shook her head, “I don’t think I’m that great, I—”  
     An obnoxious sound shivered out of the instrument as Mr. Catt brought both hands down on the keyboard.  Hard.  
     “If you insist on coming to my class late, I’ll either drop you to the probationary class again, or I’ll be forced to recommend you to Headmaster Heigl for more serious repercussions!”  
     Fakhir winced at the expression on the poor girl’s face.  He was about to say something—he wasn’t sure what—on her behalf when her friend beat him to it.  
     “Please sir!” the worried one immediately spoke up, “She’s working really hard, please don’t drop her to the probationary class again!”  
     Clearly disgusted, Mr. Catt clapped both hands together loudly.  “Enough!”  
     Students shifted uncomfortably all around the room.   
     Pacing across the floor, the ballet instructor waved at the class as a whole, his irritation evident in his jerky movements.  “Gather around,” he ordered.  
     The collective attendance of students, from Miss Baillieu’s novices to the advanced class circled on the floor and sat as indicated.  In the wings of the room the other instructors stood placidly, silently responding to the head instructor’s ire.  Ms. Ziegenfuss had a terse expression, her eyes burning into Aria’s blazing face as the girl sat down between her friends and visibly tried to shrink into as small a target as possible.  
     Fakhir lounged where he was with Mytho, glancing toward the window and only half listening while Mr. Catt began to drone on about the summer showcase being only a few days away now—he wondered if the instructor had any actual sense of time—and how disappointed he was with the progress of those who’d be exhibiting on behalf of the ballet school.  The advanced class’s rendition of Giselle was to be only one piece of the day-long arts festival, and Mr. Catt lingered lightly on his dissatisfaction with the corps before moving on to lecture the novice and junior students who had been selected for other small pieces which would be danced that day.  He noticed the instructor skipped right over mentioning certain principle students who’d been absent from classes for a week or more.  
     “Listen up everyone!”  Mr. Catt lisped loudly, his voice echoing off all the glass and hardwood as he wrapped up.  “In ballet the most important thing is to practice, the second most is practice.  Third, fourth, and fifth most… are also practice.  Why exactly, do we practice then?”  
_We could have been_ practicing _for ten minutes now if he wasn’t speaking._ Fakhir thought rebelliously.  
     No one dared answer the rhetorical question.          
     “We do it to master the basics.  Today I’ll share a story with you.”  
_Oh good, another ten minutes wasted._  
     “Back when I was a young student like yourselves attending ballet school, I happened to get the rare chance to observe Mr. Nijinsky practicing.”  
     Hushed murmurs swept like fire across the room.  Even Fakhir’s ears perked up at the mention of the celebrated and controversial ballet legend.  
     From her place at the front of the class, Aria repeated the name in confusion.  
     “You don’t listen in ballet history at all, do you Duck?” her friend muttered.  
     “We ballet school students were helping out,” Mr. Catt went on, so lost in telling his story he didn’t notice the chatting girls.  “…with the backstage preparations for a performance of Mr. Nijinsky’s.  I was only thirteen at the time, a cheeky youth who thought I had mastered the basics and was looking forward to moving cheerfully on.  While carrying set pieces out onto what I thought was the empty stage, I saw someone there all alone and crept closer to see who it might be.  Yes, it was Mr. Nijinsky himself, the man renowned as a genius for his novel choreography and the gravity-defying jumps which people called miraculous!  But that day all Mr. Nijinsky was doing was just slowly, very slowly practicing the basics over, and over, and over.  Before I knew it, I found myself asking him questions.  ‘I thought a dancer as famous as you would have a more special practice routine,’ I said.  This is how he answered me:  ‘Someone who has not mastered the basics cannot achieve advanced techniques or cultivate a noble spirit.’”   
     Fakhir rolled his eyes.  _A rather long-winded way of getting to his point._ He glanced away and caught sight of Mytho.  The prince wasn’t paying any attention to Mr. Catt’s story.  He was facing away, his clawed hand now pressed tightly to his chest.  That sickly black feeling flared again and Fakhir swallowed back the taste of bile.  “Mytho?” he hissed.  
     He jerked his attention back to Mr. Catt, on the verge of asking to be excused, and saw the instructor holding up a box which contained a ratty old pair of ballet shoes.   
     “These shoes were given to me on that very day by Mr. Nijinsky.  And having received them, I swore upon these shoes to dedicate the rest of my life to ballet!”  
     “So basically, he’s just saying practice the basics diligently,” Aria’s friend grumbled in what she probably thought was a quiet voice and was anything but.  
     “But I think some people will never get better no matter how hard or often they practice the basics.”  Her other friend teased lightly.  
     Fakhir shot a glare at the girl.  
     “…these shoes have suffered a lot of wear and tear, but to me they are the most beautiful shoes in the world.”  
     Aria wasn’t paying attention to her friends though, she was looking past Fakhir at Mytho.  Had she seen what he had?  Suddenly she gasped, her hand going to her chest in much the same way Mytho’s was, and crazy as it sounded, Fakhir felt his own heart pulse in a brief shot of pain.  He threw a sharp look back at Mytho.  The cold look in his friend’s eyes cut into him more aptly than a finely honed blade, but in a flash the look was gone, replaced with one of confusion and torment.  
     The black feeling pulsing through him again, turned dark and dangerous.  Fakhir felt violence and fear pound in equal parts through his limbs.  That storm he sensed brewing in the distance was overhead now.  And somehow he knew deep down, it was about to break.

***

     Practice seemed to last forever.  Partly because Aria, unfocused and harried, kept getting called out by Ms. Ziegenfuss for bad form or bad feet or bad attitude—whatever it was it was bad.  And partly because of the throbbing pulse emanating from the red jewel that hung around her neck, tucked safely into her leotard, which seemed to be whispering with growing urgency.  She’d grown accustomed to the strange urges of the pendant which gave her humanity and the ability to transform into Princess Tutu over the last few weeks, as well as more practiced with controlling the impulses it imparted.  But it took all her willpower not to go running off in whatever direction it aimed, aimless though that direction was at present.  
     She also couldn’t shake the eerie feeling she’d gotten from Mytho this morning during Mr. Catt’s lecture.  The look he’d given her had set off a white flash of heat in her head.  She couldn’t remember what she’d seen in her mind before that flash, whatever memory or delusion had precipitated it.  But there was the lasting impression of pain so real she’d felt for a moment as if something sharp had been thrust into her heart.  
     There hadn’t been time to dwell on it, though.  For just as she’d felt it, Mr. Catt wrapped up his lecture and all the students broke away into their various classes.  Mytho and Fakhir divided off with the rest of the advanced class to the smaller studios downstairs while the larger class of junior students lined up at the barre awaiting Ms. Ziegenfuss’s orotund instruction.  
     By the time they were finally released, the pounding pulse of her pendant had receded into a distant burning that whispered of warning without further insight.  Aria hurried through dressing, only half-listening to the friendly bantering of the girls in the locker room, and since she wasn’t paying attention, she didn’t notice the shadow that draped over her until a throat cleared right above her.  
     “Oh!” she jumped and startled, smacking into the girl gracelessly.  
     “Ugh!  Are you always this clumsy, or only on in your waking hours?”  
     Aria blinked at the girl she’d accidentally accosted.  “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed in automatic apology.  Piqué and Lillie were standing behind the stranger, both of their eyes wide with equal expressions of fear and warning.  Aria squinted at them over the stranger’s shoulder, confused as to why they were looking at her like that.  
     “You really are an eyesore,” she sneered.  
     Aria stiffened at the familiar insult.  Fakhir called her an eyesore.  A lot.  The word usually stung, though some of the bite seemed to have gone out of it somewhere along the way in their shaky truce.  When this girl said it though, all Aria felt was anger.  “I’m sorry,” she repeated without the apology this time, “Who are you?”  
     The girl’s chin tilted so far up she was in danger of scraping her pug nose against the ceiling.  “It’s Miss Heigl to you,” she sneered.  “Though I suppose I shouldn’t find it surprising that the stupidest student at school doesn’t know who the Headmaster’s daughter is.”  
     “Hey, who are you calling stupid?”  Piqué’s stupor shook off as her protective bulldog kicked in.  One of the reasons people called Aria “Duck” and not “Ugly Duck” was her friend’s tenacious temper—or at least that’s how her memory, however false, recalled it.  In fact, according to that probably-false memory, the Headmaster’s daughter was the bully Piqué had decked for calling her Muddy Maude.  That unfortunate first name and resulting incident was also the reason she went by _Piqué._           “It’s not like you’re the brightest bulb in the box, sloth-face.”  
     The self-proclaimed Miss Heigl threw a disdainful stare over her shoulder.  “Stay out of this, Muddy Maude.”  
     “Oh, you’d better—” Piqué wound up like she was about to throw the mother of all haymakers, and Lillie hastily grabbed her back.  
     “You don’t want to get suspended!” Lillie hissed.  
     Turning her attention back on Aria, the advanced student smiled poisonously.  “I know it’s probably not your fault that you’re this…” her eyes scanned up and down Aria’s dingy uniform with the sort of expression one might use when scraping dog poo off their shoe, “unfortunate.  But if I ever hear your name in the same breath as the advanced class again, I will ensure your _stay_ here at Gold Crown is suitably shortened.”  Her smile twisted into something far uglier.  “Mr. Catt is right, you’ve raised yourself too high _Duck_.  It’s up to someone better to swat you back into place.”  
     With that thinly veiled threat, and an unhealthy amount of swagger, her antagonist turned a cold shoulder and swept out of the locker room on a cloud of superiority.  
     Piqué let out a whoosh of breath.  “That bitch better watch her back,” she muttered mutinously.  
     “Come on,” Lillie sighed, “Let’s just get to class.”  
     “Are you okay?”  Piqué asked kindly.  
     Aria shook off the shock of the encounter and faced her friends.  “Did I do anything to deserve that?” she asked in genuine curiosity.  
     “No.  Heidi’s just like that,” Lillie assured her, hooking an arm through her elbow and guiding her into the hallway.  
     “Yeah, sloth-face has always been a spoiled little bully coasting along on her daddy’s coattails,” Piqué grouched, trailing along.  “She doesn’t even have any talent.  All she has is connections.  Annette should have gotten her place in the advanced class, even if she is a junior student.  That pas de deux she danced with Mytho was ten times better than anything Heidi has ever danced with Fakhir.”  
     They climbed the stairs and stepped out onto the breezeway amid the crowd of students on their way to book studies, Piqué still muttering about all the evil that was Heidi Heigl.  Lillie leaned a little closer to Aria.  
     “She is right about one thing though,” her friend whispered in her ear.  
     Aria’s stomach went cold, thinking Lillie was about to confirm some of the bully’s words.  
     “Heidi is a bitch.”  
     A startled laugh bubbled up out of her throat.  It died almost immediately when Lillie jerked her to a stop.  
     “Mr. Catt!”  
     The ballet instructor glared down at the three girls.  His eyes went to Aria, then traced back over the other two.  “I trust you’ve firmly engraved Mr. Nijinsky’s words in your minds?”  
     Aria swallowed hard, her tongue taking over for her good sense.  “Even if they diligently practice the basics, people who aren’t going to get good will never get good,” she babbled, “so… wait, how did it go?”  
     His eyes dulled and his shoulders slumped at her words, as if he were visibly giving up all hope for her.  “Be on time for class tomorrow,” he muttered in defeat, stepping around them on his way back into the studio.  
     They turned as a unit to stare after him.  
     “I think you just killed his soul, Duck,” Piqué murmured in awe.  
     “Poor man. You really did a number on his esteem,” Lillie agreed.  
     “I didn’t mean to,” Aria muttered disgruntledly.  
     A scream cracked the air, ripping through the crowd and freezing people in their paths.  It raised the small hairs on Aria’s arms and sent shivers dancing down her spine.  
     “What the—”  
     A pregnant pause of silence followed.  Then almost as one everyone started moving again.  Some running in the direction of Noverre Hall as if fleeing the coming apocalypse, while the more curiously-minded ran toward the sound as if to glimpse the horror that could elicit such a cry from a human throat.   
     Without thinking, Aria joined the crowd running toward the scream.  Lillie and Piqué exchanged a fast look before following her.  Inside the ballet school a crowd had gathered in the gallery, looking down into the main studio, everyone pushing to see what the commotion was about.  Aria forced her way to the front and stopped in horror when she saw the scene laid out below.  
     Mr. Catt lay on the ground, looking as though he’d fainted dead away.  A few students lingered on the floor, while instructors bustled around the scene trying to install order and tend to the situation.  The cause of the head instructor’s distress was apparent even at the height of the gallery.  Scattered across the gleaming hardwood in so many neatly cut pieces were the butchered remains of the prized shoes that had once graced Mr. Catt’s childhood hero.  
     Panic and purpose pounded from the pendant at her chest, and Aria closed a hard fist around it even as the air froze in her lungs.  For a long moment she stood paralyzed there with the other students, and in the next moment she broke, bursting from the crowd in a familiar frantic frenzy that led her feet wherever they would carry her.  Something was wrong.  Terribly wrong.  And she had to find Mytho.  _Now._

***

     Fakhir burst through the door into the rooms he shared with Mytho, his eyes sweeping the darkened space.  The curtains were all closed, casting shadows across the room even though he knew for a fact they’d been open when he’d left that morning.  His eyes went to the sleeping area, and a huddled figure curled up on the covers of the far bed.  
     “Mytho,” he breathed in relief, “you came back here.”  
     His relief was short-lived.  “Mytho?”  
     By the time he’d noticed his friend’s absence from the small studio where they were practicing, it had been too late for Fakhir to slip away unnoticed.  He wasn’t sure why Mytho had left, or what had brought him back here.  He hadn’t even changed back into his uniform, still dressed out in the white and black dance attire.  He was curled on his side and shivering.  
     “Fakhir,” he murmured without turning his head.  
     Concern had him moving across the room at once.  “What happened?”  
     Mytho’s head shook.  “I started to feel sick suddenly, and after that I…” he trailed off, confusion tingeing his voice as if he didn’t know or couldn’t remember.  
     That black feeling of foreboding rose sickeningly inside him again, and Fakhir hesitated, still a few paces away.  He wondered why Mytho wouldn’t turn over and look at him.  “Your desire for immediate restoration won’t hasten things,” he said through stiff lips, not even sure what he was saying or why.  “Don’t try too hard.”  
     All at once Mytho stilled.  “So I can become like you, Fakhir?”  
     That black feeling pressurized.  “What?”  
     “Is that why you failed, Fakhir?  You didn’t try hard enough?”  Mytho did roll over and face him then, a look of mocking amusement completely out of place on his face.  
     Fakhir stumbled back a pace, the cold intensity in his friend’s eyes like a tangible force.  
     “That’s not possible,” Mytho went on in that strange voice that sounded so wrong coming out of his lips.  He rose up off the bed, swinging his legs over the side.  A gleeful look came over his features.  “Say Fakhir, I have something to tell you, will you listen?”  
     “Yes,” he managed to gasp through lips gone numb.  His whole body had gone numb.  Something was very, very wrong.  
     Mytho got to his feet, looking as hale and hearty as ever, the prior sickness gone entirely.  He paced across the darkened room, running his fingertips idly over the furniture as he passed.  “It’s the story of a boy,” he started.  “A boy with a dream.  This boy dreamed of dancing, and one day he met the greatest dancer who’d ever lived.  The dancer gave him a gift and the boy treasured it.  It fed his dreams.”  
     A terrible suspicion settled over him with Mytho’s words, and he watched as his friend paced to the oriel windows and glanced briefly out the crack of the curtains before turning to face him.  Fakhir fought against his lesser the nature—the violent side he’d allowed to dominate for years, the one that wanted to throw Mytho into a wall right now and demand the truth from him.  Command him to quit this act.  
     “Eventually the boy grew into a man and he shared his dreams, made them real.  He wanted to pass his dreams on, and one day he showed his gift off to the people.”  Mytho turned coyly, looking up at Fakhir through white lashes.  “But some people don’t share the same dreams, do they Fakhir?”  
     “What did you do?” Fakhir asked, his mouth dry.  The words tasted like ash.  
     “I destroyed a dream.”   
     His heart started pounding in his chest, fear and rage pumping through his veins in equal measure—the mixture of fuel for battle.  But what was there here to fight?  “Is that true?”  
     Mytho sat on the window seat, calm despite his confession. “You think they’ve been found yet?” he asked, his whole tone and demeanor definitely _off._ He wasn’t looking at Fakhir.  He was looking away, almost manic.  He laughed in a terrible sort of delight.  
     “Why?” Fakhir asked in horror, “Why do such a thing?”  
     Mytho shrugged carelessly.  “Those shoes filled with so many beautiful memories and dreams,” he giggled again, drunk on wanton destruction.  It was so very _wrong._ “All those dreams destroyed.  Is it funny Fakhir?  It’s funny, isn’t it?”  
     The fire in his blood won.  Fakhir crossed the space between them in three steps, grasping Mytho by the shoulders and yanking him to his feet.  “What were you thinking?” he demanded, his voice out of control.  
     Shadows and light swirled in Mytho’s eyes, and that empty little smile played over his lips.  “You don’t want me thinking, do you Fakhir?  You want to do all my thinking for me like it’s always been.  Except now that I have pieces of my heart back I can think for myself, and I’m thinking that maybe this was always the way I am.  Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of right now.”  
     The blood drained from his face.  “If—”  
     “What are you going to do about it, Fakhir?” the prince mocked.  “Will you pierce my heart?  Oh wait, isn’t that sword gone now?  Didn’t _you_ break it?”  
     Fakhir released him with a violent shove, and Mytho’s knees knocked against the bench but he kept his feet.  
     “Are you angry?” he asked, sounding amused.  “Even though I’ve got pieces of my heart back?”  
     Something that felt a whole lot like helplessness welled up in him on a tide of rage.  Fakhir balled his hands into fists, “Your heart isn’t whole yet!”  His voice was still out of control.  Too ragged.  Too loud.  
     Mytho laughed.  “That’s right.  I have to hurry to get the whole thing back, and then…” he trailed off into laughter again before looking up at Fakhir with a gleaming grin.  “Maybe I’ll go give it to a crow.”  
     Fakhir’s world cracked.  He retreated a step before forcing himself to stop and stand his ground.  _No, no, no, no, no!_ This couldn’t be happening.  He’d worked too hard to let this happen.  He’d sacrificed too much.  He’d given up _everything_ to protect Mytho from this!  
     “Who on earth are you?” he asked on a wispy voice.  
     That strange gleaming look on Mytho’s face fractured.  Confusion stole into the cruel amusement that had been there before.  “I am…”  He trailed off and his brow furrowed.  More of the shadows chased themselves out of his eyes.  “I am—ah!”  Mytho clutched at his chest and doubled over.  
     Instinct drove Fakhir forward and he caught his friend, bracing him up even as the prince nearly doubled over in apparent pain.  
     “I am—”  
     Panic filled him.  “What’s wrong Mytho?”  
     The prince’s head came up, though he remained hunched.  His eyes were clear, his face contorted in fear and something else.  He clutched at his chest as if his heart was in danger of pounding right out of it.  “You have to help me Fakhir,” he begged desperately.  “Her—you have to help.”  He groaned and bent again, “my heart,” he gasped.  “She can’t, you must—”  
     “Mytho!”  
     The prince dropped suddenly to his knees, his back arching in pain and he cried out.  Fakhir stumbled away, unsure what to do or how to help.  A tear slipped out of the corner of Mytho’s eye, “Tutu,” he gasped as if it were a prayer.  He slumped over, catching himself with his elbows on the floor.  
     Fakhir crouched beside him, reaching out to pull him to his feet.  “Mytho…”  Laughing cut off his concern.  His outstretched hands froze and slowly he began to back away.  
     Mytho’s laughter grew and he pushed himself up.  “What was it you asked me?”  The manic light was back in his eyes, “You want to know who I am?”  Quick as a snake Mytho’s hand darted out and grabbed Fakhir’s blazer in a fist.  He jerked him closer and whispered, “I’ll show you, just you, right now.”  His lips spread into a terrible smile.  “Watch closely, Fakhir.”  
     With surprising strength, Mytho flung him aside and surged to his feet.  
     Fakhir landed on a hip and rolled, coming up in a long-ingrained fighting posture.  
     Mytho cackled at him and struck a pose, his feet in fourth, his body hunched, and his upraised hands twisted into the semblance of claws.  “Are you watching?”  He started prowling step by step back toward the windows.  
     It was then that Fakhir noticed the breeze fluttering the curtains.  He’d assumed up until now that the window behind it was closed.  Too late he realized differently.  “You—” he dove forward even as Mytho crouched and leapt.   
     The prince’s body bent backward, burst through the crimson curtains and out into the sky beyond… four stories up.  
     “No!” Fakhir cried, he reached out and grasped for Mytho, his fingers only brushing against fabric before his friend started to fall.  Mytho didn’t even fight it, he just smiled as he sailed backward on nothing.  
     A scream pierced the air and Fakhir’s eyes flashed up to a dormer window on the far corner of the girl’s dormitory.  A familiar redhead was framed in the open portal—what she was doing there he didn’t know—and in the next breath she’d vaulted out of safety.  His heart stuttered in his chest as Aria ran four steps across the tiled roof and leapt despite the height, the danger, the impossible distance.  Despite a courtyard full of students below.  Terror seized his breath as light and glory flashed before his eyes, and suddenly she wasn’t Aria anymore.   
     For one brief moment in time he was watching Princess Tutu leaping across the span of nothing, and then she was a swan of light, wings flapping gracefully, streaming golden light as she caught Mytho midair.  The air around them seemed to thicken, the pull of gravity seemed to weaken, and wrapped up in the swan’s glowing wings, Mytho descended safely to the earth unharmed.  
     But the black feeling in Fakhir’s chest didn’t subside.  Instead it roared into new life.  Fakhir stood at the window, his hand still half-reaching for Mytho.  Down below in the courtyard, one by one, faces started to turn in his direction, eyes fixed on his position.  Accusing stares burned into him.  The black feeling inside him pulsed and flowered.  Overhead, the storm he’d been sensing broke.

***

     Rue slowly approached the giant yew tree, its twisting branches throwing strange shadows over the cracked ruins.  Her shoes crunched over the shattered remnants of black and white tiles as she drew closer, clutching the basket in her hand a little tighter as a chill breeze pushed her ebony hair over her shoulders.  “Are you there?” she called.  
     The sound of rustling feathers answered her.  
     Relief pushed her nervousness down and she crept a bit nearer, still timid but a little more sure now.  A shape manifested out of the deep darkness, a giant raven—at least six feet tall—hunched on a thick lower branch of the yew.  
     “Ah, my daughter,” it croaked in its deep, gravelly voice.  
     “How are you feeling, dear father?” she asked in a rush of adoration.  
     “Not bad,” the giant bird answered her, “but not good either.”  
     “Poor father,” she commiserated.  Timorously she held the basket out, “I brought you gifts.”  
     The raven’s wings shifted restlessly.  “That is not the sustenance you know I crave.”  
     She felt his admonishment keenly and quailed.  “I-I know father.  I’m doing my best.”  Rue set the basket down and wrung her hands.  “But I have good news.”  
     “Oh?”  
     “The raven’s blood that you gave to me?”  Her voice rose in hope, “It looks like it’s begun to exercise its power!”  
     The raven shifted again to the restless sound of murmurous feathers.  “I see.”  
     “Yes father!”  She took a step forward excitedly, seeking the pride he would feel for her job well done.   
     “My blood, in which you soaked the prince’s feeling of love?”  
     Rue nodded happily, “Yes.  I’m so glad I did just as you had instructed me, father.”  
     “Of course you are,” the raven answered sagely.  “The only thing I ever wish for is my dear daughter’s happiness.”  
     Her eyes lit up and she felt the glow of those words spread through her.  “The prince will keep changing,” she murmured, “changing into a prince who loves crows.”  
     “Yes,” the raven nodded.  “And he will marry you, my daughter, and become my son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) was a dancer often cited as the greatest male ballet dancer of the early 20th century. After studying dance at the Imperial Ballet School, he joined the Ballets Russes in 1909 and traveled to Paris, where the Western World had one of its first introductions to Russian opera and ballet. He was renowned for his deep characterization of his parts, his gravity defying leaps, and of interest he could also dance en pointe which was rare for the male dancers of his time. As a choreographer, Nijinsky's ballets pushed social standards and opened the way of modern dance, his new trends causing riotous reactions in his audiences including a violent uproar at the premiere of his ballet, The Rite of Spring, in 1913.


	3. Die Zwei Brüder

_**The Two Brothers** _

     “Sire!”  
     His head swung up at the call, his eyes tracking to the man who’d summoned his attention.  A hand lifted in the air and he turned to trace its direction.  Dread dropped like a weight in his stomach when his eyes beheld the growing horror.  Overhead the sky rippled and burned, a riot of muted colors backlit by blue as if the entire town were protected by the filmy dome of a giant soap bubble.  He narrowed his eyes at the magical shield that held the world out, barely discerning the faint white pattern of a crack.  Beyond it the sky boiled with black.  Thousands—maybe millions—of black-bodied birds bent on destruction.  Their raucous cacophony was subdued beyond that shield, but the sound of it still induced terror.  They searched the sky, arching over the town, testing the limits of the shield with black-scaled feet while they sang their gory song of death.  
_What am I doing here?  
_     Mytho blinked.  He was standing on the quad, only… it wasn’t the quad.  The buildings around him looked like the Academy and… didn’t.  Men surrounded him in strange uniforms, looking even more out of place beside him in his blue velvet regalia.  _What is going on?_ His eyes tracked to the girl beside him.  She looked familiar but her face was blurry, indistinct.  Still the sight of her welled up a fierce protective instinct in his soul.  _It’s a dream,_ he realized.  
     “If they find the breach, we don’t have enough men to defeat them,” a man spoke beside him.  
     Mytho turned to him and blinked.  Fakhir?  No, not Fakhir.  But a knight.  His father’s knight, now his knight.  A pang slashed through him at the recollection.  _My father is dead._   He pushed the thought away and swallowed back the rising taste of bile.  _It’s just a dream,_ he reminded himself.  But then, why did it feel so real?  He turned back to the circling birds and had to clear his throat before asking, “Where?”  
     A slim hand reached up beside him, pointing to the guard house tower.  “There,” the girl at his side spoke in a low dulcet tone.  She traced the line to the distant spire of the church.  “It connects over there at the center.  It’s about ten feet wide and growing.”  
     A faint pop went off, like a large soap bubble bursting near his ear, and the faint white line in the sky became slightly more discernible.  
     Beside him, the girl flinched as if a cannon had fired.  Her face whitened.  “Twenty feet wide now.”  
     Without thinking about it, he slipped an arm around her narrow waist and felt her shaking.  Her fear was almost palpable.  Yet despite the terror of the moment, he couldn’t help but feel a flicker of awe.  He could only, just barely see the crack and hear the magic dome overhead failing.  But this waif of a girl discerned it clearly.  He wondered for a moment what it looked like to her, if it was the same effervescent iridescence of iris glass he beheld, or if it was a living rainbow to rival the auras.  Nameless fear followed in the footsteps of that thought and he quenched it down.   
_No one can know her power.  
__Wait, what?_ Mytho shook his head.  The sound of the crows beyond the protective dome grew louder.  Again without thinking, he spoke.  “Parsifal, circle up the council, we’re going to need—” he cut himself off.  _How had he known the knight’s name?  Is this memory or fantasy?  
_     “The council’s dead,” the girl murmured in a flat voice.  
     The questions racing through his head disintegrated at her words.  He stared in horror at the girl.  _Impossible._ “What?”  
     Her eyes reflected no emotion.  Without knowing how he knew, he knew she was going into shock.  “The birds killed them all.”  
     Power flooded through his veins, barely contained fury mixed with fear.  For a moment it burned like fire in his blood.  And then that fire cooled into a practiced discipline, his racing thoughts sorted, narrowed down into a trained focus.  _Protect my people.  Protect her._   “Check it out,” he snapped, though he had no reason to doubt her words.  Hadn’t he just seen her fleeing the council chamber with a murder of the demon birds at her back?  Wasn’t the carnage of that attack even now scattered at his feet?  
_Was it?  
_     He looked down and saw that the ground was littered in bodies and blood.  Sickness rose in his throat and he looked at the sword in his hand.  The blade was stained, mute evidence of his part in the battle.  _What’s going on?  
_     One of the uniformed men broke away, heading into the eastern building with his weapon drawn.  The rest closed a tighter circle around him.   
     “They’ve breached the shield,” his knight reported, eyes trained clinically on the sky.  
     Screams sounded from the town as the creatures divebombed the streets.  One of his men went pale and again without knowing how, Mytho knew what the man was thinking.  There were no soldiers in the town.  Only women and children, the old and the frail.  Those that couldn’t fight against the raven’s spreading evil.  These men’s families.  Duty galvanized in his soul.  “Otto, take the men and secure the town.  Get everyone you can into the church.”  
     His knight threw him a sharp look, “Sire—”  
     “We’ll draw them in and hold them here,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.  His men hesitated to leave his side.  They knew what he was suggesting even if his broken mind didn’t. “We’ll buy you the time, gentlemen,” he told them firmly, the words tripping easily off his tongue without conscious thought.  “There are ten thousand souls in this city, let’s see how many we can save tonight.”  
     The volume of the screams outside the palace gates increased, and his men obeyed.  The sound of rushing feet, a blur of uniforms, and then he stood alone on the quad that wasn’t the quad among the carnage of a battle he couldn’t remember with only his knight and the girl at his side.  He turned to his knight, “The palace guard?”  
     “Mostly dead,” the warrior reported.  He eyed the chamber that must have been the council’s, not needing to say that they would have fallen protecting the circle.  Again, Mytho shook his head.  _Circle?_ He didn’t know what these things meant.  But he knew they were true nonetheless.  
     Mytho took a deep breath, calming the aggression that surged in his soul.  With a hand on the girl’s elbow, he passed her over to his knight.  “Get her to the gatehouse,” he ordered, “the wards are strongest there.”  
     Her eyes went wide, her mouth opening to protest.  “But I—”  
     An image flashed in his mind, as clear as daylight, the girl with a knife in her chest choking on blood.  Panic exploded in his head and he gripped her arm—tighter than he’d intended.  He loosened his hold when he saw her flinch.  “Don’t argue with me on this,” he pleaded.  “If I’m to fight this battle, I need to know you’re safe.”  
     Her eyes glittered with tears.  “I—”  
     He leaned in instinctively and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  “Go,” he ordered, his voice cracking on the word.  
     Grimly, his knight nodded and took the girl.  
     The last of his remaining men rejoined him, returning from the eastern building.  There was a stricken look on his face.  “I’m sorry sire, there were no survivors.”  
     Mytho’s jaw clenched.  Somehow, he’d known the man would say that.  A vile oath blistered his lips.  
     “What’s the plan?”  
     Turning toward the boiling sky which writhed overhead with the demon birds, Mytho spun his weapon over his hand.  A wild joy leapt up in his heart and light danced along the blade.  A smile stretched across his lips.  “Protect the people,” he commanded, “kill the raven.”  
     The soldier drew his own weapon, no less sure than Mytho how this day would end.  But wait… he knew.  It would end with her, and him, and the raven.  _She’ll die and I’ll shatter my heart._ Mytho shook his head again, trying to clear it.  No.  He wouldn’t let that happen this time.  This time he’d stop the raven.  This time he’d save her.  Brace yourself,” he warned his man.  And then in a roar that echoed off the very walls of the town, Mytho called, “TO ME!”  
     As one the rushing wings overhead turned.  A hundred thousand deadly birds seemed to pause in the sky, ruby eyes fixed on his challenge.  And then, with all the force of a cosmic hammer, they struck. 

     Mytho woke with a cry on his lips, his heart pounding so painfully in his chest he feared it might burst.  Shadows and darkness and ebony feathers swirled in the violent recesses of his imagination as the dream remained with him, its sticky traces catching at his sanity like cobwebs.  He rolled out of the sweat-soaked sheets, spilling onto the floor on his hands and knees.  He couldn’t breathe, his heart swelled and deflated in his chest to the rapid patter of a Vickers machine gun.    
     Pain sliced through him, wracking him with fever chills, and he fought against it.  Fought against the pain.  Fought against the shadows.  Against the madness in his mind.  And for one glorious second that darkness split open and there was light.  In that one moment of absolute clarity, he was whole.  The town, the attack, the raven… everything.  It stood stark in his memory in hyper-focused detail.  “I can’t—” he gasped, fingers flexing into the tangled sheets that had followed him to the floor.  “She mustn’t—”  
     Pain sliced through him again, and confusion washed in its wake.  The familiar fugue returned, and he groaned, knowing he had to remember but not remembering what he had to recall.  “Tutu…” he begged, tears burning down his cheeks.  The pain was in his head now.  Pounding, splitting, rending, tearing.  Bloody pain as though some great cosmic hand had reached inside him and was slowly skinning his soul from his flesh with a dull spoon.  It hurt more to fight the sensation, and somewhere inside him there was something that whispered:  _‘give in’._  
      “No,” he shook his head, shivering violently and clutching at his hair so tightly he pulled away fistfuls of white strands.  “I won’t, I can’t.”  
     Shadows and chaos swam in his consciousness.  They threatened to suck him in, to pull him under.  “Please,” he begged.  “Somebody, help me…”  
     But there was no one.  
     He was alone in his nightmares.  Alone in his own mind.  In his own personal hell.  “I won’t give in,” he gasped.  It was a weak protest.  Pain swelled inside him and burst.  He clutched at his heart, trying to breathe through that pain, but it felt like someone had driven a sword through his chest and ripped out his heart.  “Tutu…” he begged again.  
     Nobody answered.  
     The shadows closed in and this time… the darkness won.

***

     Aria woke screaming.  A hot lance of pain pierced her chest and pinned her to the bed.  She panted frantically, unable to draw air into her lungs.  Tears cooled on her cheeks, and she clutched desperately at the front of her night dress, ripping it open.  
     …there was nothing there.  
     Her hand closed around her cold pendant as if for comfort. _A dream.  Just a dream.  
_     Or was it?  She couldn’t remember.  With a moan she sat up and covered her face with her hands.  She may not remember her dream, but she did remember the nightmare that was the preceding day.  “Mytho jumped out the window yesterday, that happened right?”  
     Of course it had.  She couldn’t wipe away the memory of seeing him fall, that strange mocking smile on his face.  He hadn’t even fought it, or tried to reach back for Fakhir’s grasping hand.  Aria had seen the whole thing from her own window.  She’d felt the ugly black feeling twisting in her soul seconds before it happened, as if there were living shadows inside her trying to strangle the breath from her body.  A faint whisper of that sensation had remained through the day.  It remained with her now.  
     “What’s going on?” she whimpered, still clutching at her pendant.  It was a cold hard lump of helpless nothing in her palm.  She looked to the window again and saw the whole scene play out for the thousandth time.  She’d thought it strange her pendant should lead her back to her own room.  She’d only been seconds from rushing out again when she’d seen the flicker of movement beyond Mytho’s curtain.  If she hadn’t— _he would be dead._   Another faint spear of pain punctured her chest and she gasped against it.  Something was very, very wrong.  
     “Duck!” a knock at the door heralded Piqué.  
     _Oh crap!_ Another memory occurred to her, and her eyes went wide.  _Everyone saw me turn into Princess Tutu!_    
     “Duck, I know you’re in there, you can’t avoid this forever!”  
     _Avoid what?_ Oh holy tutus, what had she done?”  
     “Come on, Duck, I need my blue skirt!  I tore a hole in the white one yesterday.”  
     Relief flooded her and Aria remembered the skirt she’d borrowed from Piqué.  She jumped off her bed and sorted through her things before she found it. “Here,” she said, throwing the door open and thrusting the skimpy garment at Piqué’s face.  
     Piqué’s eyes went wide.  “Uh, thanks?”  She took the skirt.  “Get dressed fast, Duck.  We’re heading to class in a few minutes.”  Her eyes tracked over her friend, “And uh, maybe do something with your hair.”  
     Aria stared at her blankly as Piqué walked back to her room to pack her school bag.  She closed the door and turned to the small scrap of a mirror on her wall.  Yikes!  Her hair was practically standing up on her head.   
     Grasping desperately at the practical distraction of preparing for class, Aria rushed around her morning routine.  She even took care in brushing her hair and making sure all her clothes were properly buttoned and right side out.  _Was it only yesterday that I thought nothing had changed?_ And then in a few hours everything did.  The black sensation of uneasiness spread through her again while she gathered her books.   
     _I wonder why he did that?_  “Could he possible have jumped out the window because his heart hasn’t been returned yet?”  But how in all creation did that make any sense?  A week ago, just after she’d returned the heart shard of love, he had been fine.  And then yesterday he started acting so strange…  
     She paused in the act of lacing up her shoes.  _Could he have possibly been the one who destroyed Mr. Catt’s prized ballet shoes?  
_     The thought left her cold in fear.  “No.  No, Mytho would never do that.”  She shook her head in firm denial.  And yet… the look on his face as he fell out the window flashed back to her again.  The way he smiled, the way he didn’t even fight the fall.  It was like he wasn’t afraid.  Like it was a game.  That wasn’t like Mytho either.  
     She thought back to the moment she’d returned that last shard of his heart.  For a second in the gloom of that illusory lake, it had looked like his eyes cleared.  His hands had tightened almost painfully on her arms and she thought he might say something.  But then the moment had passed.  She hadn’t even remembered it until now, and she caught herself rubbing her hands up and down her arms where he’d held her.  His grip had left bruises.  “What’s going on?”  
     Loud pounding broke her of her reverie.  “Come on, Duck!”  It was Lillie this time.  
     “Coming!” she answered.  
     Lillie greeted her with a bright smile and almost manic expression.  “Come on!” she cried, “we don’t want to miss it!”  
     “Miss what?” Aria asked in bafflement.  
     Piqué came rushing down the hall, “There you are,” she exclaimed, grabbing Aria’s arm and dragging her from the room.   
     Aria noticed the other girls were rushing out of the dorm around them as well.  “What time is it?” she wondered.  
     “About seven-fifteen,” Piqué answered.   
     “So why is everyone rushing out?”  
     “Because!” Lillie cried out excitedly, “Fakhir and Mytho were summoned to the headmaster’s office!”  
     Aria blinked at them stupidly, feeling a little bit slow.  “For what?”  
     “The pushing incident!” Piqué grumbled as if that should be obvious, still hurrying Aria along with a hand on her arm.  
     Whispers came to Aria on the breeze when they hit the road to the Academy.  Excited chatter buzzed around them from the unprecedented number of students hurrying to get to school early.  An unpleasant atmosphere hovered over them, a strange sort of bloodthirst the likes you’d see from a crowd gathered around the site of an accident.  It sent more chills rushing down Aria’s spine.  “What pushing inc—”  
     Piqué squeezed her hand tighter.  “Don’t you know, Duck?”  Her eyes were wide grey orbs in her face.  “The _wonderful_ Fakhir pushed the _wonderful_ and _unresisting_ Mytho out of the window yesterday!”  
     The blood drained from her head and her jaw dropped.  “What!?”  She continued to give her best fish imitation as she stared with wide eyes at Piqué.  “Th-there’s got to be some kind of mistake,” she stammered intelligibly.  “Because Mytho jumped out himself, it wasn’t as if—”  
     “As if he’d do that!” Piqué scoffed with narrowed eyes.  
     “Everyone was watching,” Lillie shrugged, skipping along happily beside them.  “They’ll be no excuses.”  
     Aria felt her chest squeeze.  _But that isn’t what happened!  I saw the whole thing!  I have to say something!  
_     “That was just too cruel, even for Fakhir,” Piqué reminisced, a vague expression of horror in her eyes.  
     “But did you see that thing that saved him?” Lillie exclaimed.  “I wasn’t there, but I heard it looked like a giant swan.”  
     _Giant swan?_ Aria’s thoughts briefly derailed.  _Is that what I looked like?  
_     “Yeah,” Piqué murmured with stars in her eyes, “Man, that was almost unbelievable.  It just swept out of nowhere.”  
     Well… that was one thing off her mind today.  But—she looked around at the rushing students.  “So all these people…”  
     “We all want to be there to see it when Fakhir gets expelled!” Lillie gushed.  
     “And probably arrested,” Piqué added.  
     Aria froze, her limbs locking down so that not even Piqué’s insistent hand on her arm could drag her forward.   
     “Come on!” Piqué urged, jogging on ahead.  “You don’t want to miss it!”  
     Aria stayed rooted in place, too horrified to move.  _But when I saw him, I’m sure that Fakhir wasn’t even touching Mytho._ Her pendant had been throbbing at the time, there was danger in that room surely, but it wasn’t Fakhir.  The shadows she’d felt yesterday seemed to return.  She didn’t know what was going on, but the sense of _wrongness_ in the pit of her stomach couldn’t be ignored.  Without thinking, she started to run.

***

     Fakhir stood beside Mytho in front of the headmaster’s desk, his hands clenched at his sides, ready for the blow to fall.  Beside him Mytho was impassive, his face almost a mask of serene patience.  But Fakhir had seen a different expression there yesterday.  The gleeful mocking, the manic insanity in his eyes right before he jumped backward out the window.  _What was he trying to prove?_ Fakhir wondered.  _That I can’t protect him?  
_     He’d made himself scarce the rest of the day.  Returning to the rooms late, long after Mytho had fallen into a restless, fitful sleep, and leaving long before sunup.  He’d searched for answers in the only place he knew to find them—stories.  So far, his search had yielded nothing.  Since the incident at the lake, Fakhir had been poring over the old tomes in response to that restless feeling in his soul.  Yesterday had cemented his resolve.  He’d be there now if not for this summons.  
     The headmaster had two files on his desk, one with Mytho’s name on it.  One with his.  He folded his hands over both and leaned forward.  “Unpleasant incidents just keep happening lately, don’t they?” His eyes bored into first one student, then the other.  
     Fakhir’s hands tightened until his nails cut into his palms and blood welled to the surface.  _Unpleasant?_ That was one word for watching his friend jump out a window to what should have been his death.  If Tutu hadn’t been there, Mytho would have—  He cut that thought off before it could form.   
     Headmaster Heigl’s eyes shifted to Fakhir.  “Miss Ameisenbär still doesn’t remember what happened here on the school grounds, but you were the only one with her on that path, weren’t you Mr. Suziere?”  
     Fakhir ground his teeth together and struggled to maintain his calm.  “Headmaster, I told you before, I had nothing to do with—”  
     “And then there are reports I received that on the night of the Eleki Troupe’s premiere, you were seen physically accosting Mr. Fürst and a female student of this school.”  
     His face paled, “I—”  
     “And—” the headmaster lifted his file and opened it, his eyes scanning the pages contained within.  “A witness stated having seen you vandalize school property.  You broke a very expensive window on the lower floor of the art and music division hall.”  The headmaster closed the file and set it down, folding his hands again.  “Is there any truth to that?”  
     Fakhir opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.  But what could he say?  All those things were technically true.  Hell, the only thing the headmaster had left out was him stealing Godfrey’s sword from the catacombs!  Except the only witness to that had been the veiled woman, Cundrie.  His eyes narrowed.  _I wonder if she’d know anything about what’s going on?_   He snapped his mouth shut again.  There was no sensible explanation for everything he’d done, not one the headmaster would understand.  
     Headmaster Heigl held his gaze a moment more before glancing to Mytho.  “And now this drama.  I’ve been told by several eyewitnesses that Mr. Suziere was seen throwing you out the window of your shared rooms yesterday, is this true Mr. Fürst?”  
     The serene expression on Mytho’s face fractured a moment.  Something like pain sliced through his eyes, he grimaced a moment and went tense.  A second later it was gone, and the serene expression returned.  Fakhir narrowed his eyes at the prince, not even sure if he had imagined the whole thing or not.  Shadows seemed to swim in the prince’s eyes.   
     “And yet,” the headmaster went on when Mytho failed to reply, “here you are hale and whole.  How is that?” his eyes went to Fakhir this time.  
     It was Fakhir’s turn to grimace.  _Well sir, you see Mytho is actually a fairytale prince, and another of your students is actually a duck who can turn into a girl who can turn into a faery princess, and she apparently can also turn into a swan though that may have been an illusion of magic, and she saved Mytho by leaping from the roof of the girl’s dorms and catching him.  And since it’s come up, you might want to know that another of your students is actually a crow, and she’s been trying to kill the one who’s a duck, because she’s obsessed with the prince.  And I’ve been trained as a knight to protect the prince by a group of strange soldiers in town who taught me about a curse which stopped time from moving and all of you from aging for the past fifteen years.  
_     Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.  He ground his teeth together in frustration.  
     The headmaster sighed.  “While I may be able to dismiss a couple of accounts as an ill-prepared prank, I can hardly dismiss the number of complaints I have received concerning whatever happened yesterday.  However, I am aware of how gossip works in this Academy, and so I would like to hear your side of things first hand gentlemen.  What exactly happened yesterday?”  
     Fakhir opened his mouth to respond but Mytho beat him to it.  “A simple accident of carelessness, sir.”  
     Fakhir’s hands spasmed open and he cast an incredulous look at the prince.  “What?”  
     “It was just an accident,” Mytho went on in a soft, silky voice that was somehow just _wrong_.  
     The headmaster’s eyebrows went up, “Accident?”  
     “Yes,” Mytho confirmed.  “I’m sorry to have caused you worry.”  
     Irritation flared in his veins, “Why would you lie like that?” he hissed at Mytho.  
     He wasn’t as quiet as he intended.  Headmaster’ Heigl’s eyes sharpened, “What do you mean, Mr. Suziere?”  
     Fakhir immediately straightened, his lips pressing together, and his hands fisting again at his sides.  
     The headmaster cocked his head.  “I must say that I’m reluctant to accept the accident explanation myself.”  
     “Are you saying that you believe Fakhir pushed me out of the window, headmaster?”  Mytho asked smoothly, a hint of amused mocking in his tone.  
     Fakhir shot him a look.  There was something decidedly off about his expression.  It was too calculated, too artificial.  Too smooth.  
     The headmaster spread his hands, “Arguments can sometimes happen, Mr. Fürst.  For example, Albrecht and Hilarion both wanted to marry the maiden Giselle.”  His eyes flashed to Fakhir.  “The summer showcase is fast approaching, perhaps there was an argument over casting.  I believe Mr. Suziere was also up for the role of Albrecht before it went to you, Mr. Fürst.”  
     They both stared at him, saying nothing.  
     The headmaster sighed.  He turned his expression on Fakhir.  “Are you aware of the conditions of your scholarship here, Mr. Suziere?”  
     _And there it is,_ Fakhir felt his stomach twist.  “Yes sir.”  
     “There is no question you are an exceptional student, but the frequency and nature of the incidents that have been cropping up in which you are involved have cast aspersions on what is otherwise a stellar academic record.  Since neither of you have anything else to say to enlighten this situation, I shall have to accept Mr. Fürst’s explanation.  However, I cannot be seen to do nothing in the face of so many complaints.  Since you are local, Mr. Suziere, I am going to have to ask you to give up your place in the dorms.”  
     His heart clenched.  “Yes sir.”  
     “And if there are any further incidents, Mr. Suziere, I will be forced to take more extreme actions.”  
     Mytho said nothing.  
     “Is that all?”  
     “Yes gentlemen,” the headmaster sighed.  “You are dismissed.”  
     Fakhir turned smartly on his heel and left before Mytho could turn his head.  If he saw that strange look in his friend’s eyes just now, he was fairly certain he’d lose it and get himself expelled.  A crowd had gathered in the hall outside the headmaster’s office—students hungry for the latest gossip.  Eyes cut into him, accusing stares and condemning faces.  He ignored them all as he held his head high and marched past them.  Only one pair of large blue eyes snagged his own as he passed, and they held a world of worry in their depths.  _Aria._ She stood watching him with a pale face, clutching her  books to her chest.  He shared her worry but not for himself.  He was terrified for Mytho.

***

     Shadows.  Darkness.  Rushing black feathers.  
     Mytho shook his head as he trekked down the hall from the headmaster’s office, trying to clear it of the black haze that clung to the lining of his skull.  It was a little like the eerie song that had filled his mind at the underground lake.  When it consumed him, he had no control, nor memory of who or what he was.  When he struggled against it, he was filled with pain that started in his heart and spread up his chest, down his shoulders and arms, down his torso and legs, and finally pounded into his brain.  Pain so searing and intense he’d do anything just to make it end.  Yet he _had_ to fight it.  There was some strange instinct in his soul that begged him not to give in.  He hoped it was goodness.  
     He wasn’t so sure.  
     Whispers followed him as he walked.  They trailed after him like spider silk streaming in the early morning breeze.   
     _“Can you believe that?”  
_     _“I heard he covered for Fakhir.”  
_     _“That’s so like him.”  
_     _“Mytho looks like he’s in pain.”  
_     _“Well he was betrayed by the person he thought was his best friend.”  
_     Betrayed?  Was he betrayed?  Or was he the betrayer?  He shook his head again, again trying to clear it.  His soul cracked and the pain rushed back.  He clutched at his heart and braced himself briefly against the wall.  _I have to get out of here.  
_     Hurrying now, Mytho turned down two more corridors and slipped out a side door.  The fresh air helped sweep some of the shadows from his soul, but in their wake the agony increased.  It swallowed him down and he stumbled, lost his footing and fell.  Sweat broke out on his brow.  _I have to fight this!  
_     _“Don’t fight, dear prince,”_ a voice seemed to whisper insidiously in his mind.  _“I can make all your pain go away.  All you have to do is give in.”  
_     “Who are you?” he gasped.  
     _“Does it matter?  If I can take away the pain?”  
_     “Why—why are you inside of me?”  
     The only answer was a spear of white-hot light that stabbed into his brain.  He closed his eyes against it, and when he opened them a shadow had fallen over him.  He looked up and saw a long grey pleated skirt, short grey military-style jacket, white blouse, and then a face.  The girl looked vaguely familiar with her strawberry blonde hair and grey eyes that matched her jacket.  Did he know  her?  
     She fidgeted nervously, a pretty blush staining her cheeks.  “Um, you know, this might be none of my business, but… I think you’re making a big mistake.”  
     _“Isn’t she lovely?”_ the voice inside him murmured malignantly. _“Such a sweet creature.”  
_     Her eyes flicked briefly to his face and then looked away.  “I’m talking about Fakhir,” she went on, looking distinctly uncomfortable.  “You two have been friends for a long time so it’s not that I don’t understand why you’d want to cover for him in front of the headmaster.”  
     “ _Ah, what a lovely heart this little girl has,”_ the malevolent voice continued to whisper.  Its menace expanded inside his head.  _“I wonder what it would taste like…”  
_     _No!_ his own voice shouted in response.  Another white-hot spear of pain lanced through him.  
     “...but if something like this happens a second time, you might end up never being able to dance again… Or worse.”  
     The pain cleared.  Darkness reigned.  
     “Why are you talking to me about this?” Mytho asked.  He didn’t recognize his own voice.  
     The girl’s eyes went wide.  “Yesterday I saw you,” she mumbled, toeing the ground uncomfortably.  “I saw you gliding down from the sky with this enormous white bird next to you.”  
     A crack fractured in his head, _white bird?_ Tutu.  
     “ _Ignore it,”_ the voice whispered seductively.  _“Focus on the girl.  Imagine how sweet she would taste…”  
_     A dreamy look entered the girl’s face.  “When I saw that, I thought maybe you were being protected by the god of dance or something.”  
     A small smile twisted his lips up, and he gazed at the girl with a trace of amusement.  “You say such cute things,” he racked his brain for a name and it came to him, “Piqué.”  Realizing he was still on the ground, Mytho stood.  She was a little thing compared to him, with the delicate frame of a dancer.  Such a petite little thing.  How easy it would be to take her.  The shadows in his mind deepened.  His smile grew.  “And you have a forthright, steadfast, and beautiful heart beating within you.”  He wondered what the voice had suggested.  How would that heart taste?  
     The girl stuttered back a step, her eyes wide now.  
     Mytho held his hand for her to take.  _“That’s it,”_ the voice encouraged.  _“Draw the girl in, and then we can take her heart!”  
_     “Oh, I—um, I’m going to be late for class,” she stammered and turned on her heel.  
     Mytho watched her go with growing amusement.  _What a beautiful heart.  
_     _“And it shall be ours.”_

***

     The little white duck looked on from her place hidden in the bushes that lined the walk in front of the administration building.  She watched Mytho’s exchange with wide blue eyes, ducking further into the greenery as he shrugged and laughed to himself.  Her suspicion had prompted her to change into a duck and follow the prince, and now it wasn’t just a suspicion anymore.  Something was seriously wrong with the prince and she had to find out what it was.   
     _Who was he talking to before Piqué showed up?_ She wondered.  _What is going on?  
_     She hunched into the shadows of foliage as Mytho passed her heading toward Noverre Hall, and when he’d walked by, she scooted out and followed him on gangly grey legs.  She fluffed wings that were starting to sprout flight feathers and hurried along.  Mytho outpaced her easily, and he turned down the corner of the building and out of sight before she could catch up to him.  
     With a burst of speed, the little duck rounded the corner and came to a stop.  There was nothing there.  A wide green lane extended before her right up to the trees that lined the campus.  There was no way Mytho could have reached the end of the building and gone around another corner or disappeared into the trees in the few seconds he’d been out of sight.  The prince wasn’t _that_ fast.   
     Something caught her eye, floating down toward the ground on a vagrant breeze.  With stuttering steps, the little duck waddled up to it, unable to believe what her own eyes were seeing.  Still it lay there, stark and solid against the green grass with a host of implications her avian mind didn’t want to consider.  
     _A raven’s feather._

***

     Fakhir flipped another page of the book, his eyes tracing down the lines of script and he sighed.  A headache was beginning to pound and he pushed the book away, rubbing at his eyes as if to relieve the pressure.  It didn’t help.  He grabbed the book again and pulled it toward him.  _There has to be something here.  
_     Footsteps sounded, loud in the conditioned quiet of the library, and the clickity-clack was headed in his direction.  Since he was seated against the wall at the furthest study desk in the far corner of the northern wing the interruption was out of place.  He looked up, eyes scanning his surroundings.  Most of the study desks here were empty, the only other student a bespectacled boy hunched over a pile of papers scrawling away in a notebook.  His gaze went immediately to the girl rushing past the desks with a wild look in her eyes.  
     She skidded up to him breathlessly.  “Here you are,” she panted, looking like she’d just run laps around Goldkrone Towne.  “Somebody said you’d be in here, but I didn’t know where, and is this where you’ve been all this time?  It’s really creepy in this building, I don’t know why you’d want to hang out in here.”  Her eyes went to the book he was reading, “Except this is where all the books are so I guess if you wanted a book you’d have to come here.”  
     Uneasiness stirred in his chest.  If Aria was babbling like this then something must be wrong.  “What happened?”  
     Her eyes went wide, her hands twisting her skirt, ruining the already sorry pleats.  “Well, just now I was following Mytho and I saw him stumble, and then Piqué ran into him, and it was really weird, he wasn’t acting like himself at all.  I think he scared Piqué.  And yesterday was really weird too, I mean why would Mytho jump out of a window?  And I saw him jump out of the window, no one else seems to have seen what I saw, but I _know_ what I saw and I know that he was lying about what happened, and you were lying too, but everyone thinks that you pushed him and that isn’t right because you didn’t push him, and you’d never do anything to hurt Mytho—well except for that one time you tried to shatter his heart—and you were kind of mean to him before that too, but I guess you had good intentions.  Although they say that the road to hell is paved in good intentions, but I don’t know anything about hell anyway.  And something is wrong with Mytho and I’m really worried about him.  You know somebody cut up Mr. Nijinsky’s shoes yesterday?  And Mr. Catt was really mad about it, and with the way Mytho is acting I almost don’t want to believe it, but I think he may have had something to do with it and—”  
     The bespectacled boy stood up from his desk in exasperation, “Can you please be a little quieter!” he called out irritably.  
     Fakhir huffed, shooting a glare at the boy.  “Sit,” he ordered, pushing out the chair beside him with his foot.  “Calm down.”  Whatever had her worked up had clearly shaken her.  
     She stammered into silence and collapsed in the chair with a contrite expression.  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.  “I just—”  
     “I know,” he sighed.  
     Aria turned big eyes on him.  “Did something happen to Mytho?”  
     He looked away, heart twisting.  _Yes.  What the hell it is, I have no idea._ “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”  
     Her voice was small and child-like.  “And what happened yesterday?  Mytho jumped out the window himself, didn’t he?  But in front of the headmaster he made it sound like he was just covering for you.”  She rubbed at her chest with one hand, tears glittering in her eyes, “And that made it look like you were the bad guy.”  
     Fakhir stared out toward the quad, his own thoughts tumbling darkly in his mind.  “He did jump out the window,” he murmured to himself.  “I don’t know why Mytho would do a thing like that.  He wasn’t acting like himself at all.  It was almost like he was possessed by something.  I just can’t figure out—”  
     Aria’s sharp intake of breath drew his attention.  “Just now I was following Mytho…”  
     “You said that.”  
     She hesitated and chewed her lip.  “Well, after he spoke to Piqué he went around the corner and kind of vanished.”   
     Fakhir stared at her blankly.   
     “He left behind a raven’s feather.”  
     _A raven’s feather!?_ Fakhir leapt to his feet, sending his chair flying and tumbling into the wall.  Aria startled out of her own chair, eyes wide in fright.  “Show me!” he demanded.  
     “O-okay.”  
     She turned and started away, but then had to hurry to catch up to him as he led the way out of the library.  Something almost frantic was driving him forward.  _Could this be what I’ve been afraid of?_   He didn’t know.  But he knew he needed answers.   
     On the steps of the library he paused.  “That way,” Aria said at his side, pointing.  
     Fakhir started in the direction she indicated, crossing the quad at a fast clip.  Aria ran to catch up to him, but he didn’t—couldn’t—slow down for her.  A figure snagged his attention from the corner of his eye and he turned his head without slowing.  All at once his limbs locked down and Aria, still running behind him, slammed headlong into his back.  It barely moved him.  His entire focus was on the person standing almost directly across from him, her back turned as she stared at the swan fountain.  
     “Ow!” Aria grumbled, rubbing at her nose, “Why’d you stop?”  
     As if sensing them there, and Fakhir had no doubt the conniving witch could do exactly that, the girl turned.  Laughing red eyes fixed on him.  Rage surged through his veins.  
     “It’s Rue!” Aria gasped.        
     _Krähe.  
_     Seething, Fakhir changed direction and charged toward the crow bitch.  
     “Fakhir!” Aria cried out in panic behind him, but he was beyond reason.  
     Fakhir grabbed the unresisting Rue with both hands wrapped around her biceps and shook her.  “You did this!” he shouted in her face.  “What did you do to Mytho!”  
     “Fakhir!” Aria again.  She rushed up to them, plucking futilely at his arm to pull him away.  She might as well have been trying to lift a mountain for all the good it did her.  
     “What do you mean?” the ballerina challenged him, her chin lifted stubbornly as she met his rage with her own defiant gaze.  
     “Don’t play dumb with me!” he growled.  
     They were drawing attention.  Too much attention.  All across the quad students were staring at them.  Flashing black robes indicated at least one teacher was hurrying their way.  Fakhir was beyond caring.  There were some things in this world more important than the threat of expulsion.  Mytho was one of them.  
     “Let go of me!” Rue cried out, playing it up.  “That hurts!”  
     Fakhir felt his blood boil.  “Show your true colors!” he leaned closer and hissed, “Krähe.”  
     Rue’s lips twisted into a cruel smile and she laughed softly.  The sound chilled his blood.  “Check.” She purred back.  
     A hand came out of nowhere, firm on his arm, followed by a familiar voice.  “Stop it.”  
     Fakhir reacted out of pure instinct.  He pivoted, turned, twisting his arm to disengage the grip but instead of meeting the expected resistance, quite suddenly there was nothing there.  Momentum kept his arm moving, his knuckles struck against something solid, and a collective gasp went up from the quad.  Fakhir stared in horror at what he’d done.  
     Mytho stood behind him, a hand held to his face where Fakhir had struck him.  Blood welled from a split lip.  His eyes seemed to glitter, cruel and cunning, and a small smile traced across his lips before disappearing.  
     Rue’s voice behind him, gloating and smug.  “And mate.”  
     They’d planned this.  
     Red-hot fury turned suddenly icy and settled like stone within him.  He glared at Mytho, then at Rue.  “What have you done?”  
     She smirked at him.  
     “Don’t worry about me,” Mytho’s voice carried over the quad, clearly addressing the shocked onlookers.  “I’ll be just fine.”  
     Whispers.  Voices.  Accusations.  
     _“That’s so like Mytho.”  
_     _“He’s incredibly mature.”  
_     _“Unlike Fakhir.”  
_     And the headmaster’s words ringing in his head.  _“…if there are any further incidents, Mr. Suziere, I will be forced to take more extreme actions.”  
_     It was his job to protect Mytho, and he’d just played into their hands and removed himself from the board.  This time his eyes went to Aria.  Her eyes were large, her face white.  Regret sliced through him.  _What have I done?_


	4. Der Prinz und die Tänzerin

_**The Prince and The Dancer** _

     Rue crept across the shattered, broken black and white tiles of the ruin.  Shadows played across the crumbling mansion, alive with shapes and monsters that lurked just at the edges of the imagination.  The trees overhead rustled with millions of feathers.  The night was alive, watching her with sharp red eyes.  A groan at the end of the stage-like foundation caught her attention and she spied the large raven resting on the edge of a crumbled wall, his feathers puffed out against the cool night.  
     “Are you in pain, father?” she asked tremulously.  
     The raven’s head came up, burning eyes seared into her on either side of a long, sharp beak.  “I want to leave this place as soon as I can,” he groaned again.  “If I were free, I could wrap these wings around my dear daughter and clasp her in a tight embrace.”  
     One part of her wanted that, her starved soul craving such affection.  Another part she wasn’t sure she could identify quailed at the thought of being held close to the giant raven’s body, his sharp beak within range of her flesh.  Suppressing a shiver, Rue forced herself to take another step across the broken floor.  “You only need to endure it a little longer, father,” she promised.  She stepped forward again, close enough now to touch him, and reached out one shaking hand to stroke his wing.  
     The raven ruffled his feathers, turning his head to keep his sharp eyes trained on her.  
     “It looks like the prince has found us our prey,” she told him, knowing this would please him.  
     His eyes flared, glowing in the darkness.  “The prince has?”  He sounded surprised.  “Well, well, well.”  
     Rue felt a little thrill at his positive response.  “I’m so glad I obeyed your instructions father,” she crooned, smoothing her hand down his wing again before backing away.  “I may have lost to Tutu at the lake, but if I had not soaked the heart shard with the prince’s feeling of love in your blood that day as you instructed, my prince would not have returned to me.”  She smiled a little, talking mostly to herself now, lost in the memory of watching the girl Aria in her guise of Tutu falling into the lake… sinking… drowning.  A shame she had to go and find the will to swim back up.  “I suppose I have to be grateful to Princess Tutu for giving the heart shard back to him.”  
     The raven said nothing for a long moment.  Then he snapped his beak and ruffled his feathers, making his already large form appear even larger.  Despite herself, Rue stumbled back a step.  “It would serve you well to be accommodating to Princess Tutu,” he warned in his deep, gravelly voice.  “In order to break the seal to release me from this place we have to find the rest of the prince’s heart shards.  We need Princess Tutu’s power to do that.”  
     Rue gasped at the cutting reprimand.   
     “If you try to get rid of her again,” he continued to warn, “I’ll show you no mercy.  Daughter or not.”  
     Her eyes stung.  “I’m sorry, I won’t father!” she wailed, falling to her knees on the broken tiles.  
     He eyed her suspiciously before giving a disdainful nod.  “Good.”  
     She hung her head, hoping the shadows would disguise her tears.   
     “Other than myself,” the raven growled, “no one but the prince in the story can truly love a pitiful person like you, who  despite being a crow, was born into that hideous human body.”  
     She blinked.  Was that true?  It had to be.  Yet… images of Tutu flashed through her head again, as Aria this time, following her around Goldkrone Towne in a tireless campaign to be friends.  
_“I’ll call you Rue.  It’s cuter that way.”  
__“You really dance beautifully en pointe.”  
__“So… we can become even better friends, right?”  
__“…you’re my friend!”  
__“Rue!  Oh no, Mytho!”_  
     She blinked again at the recollection of that last memory.  It had been… here, right?  No, that was impossible.  Darkness flooded her mind, whipping the image of Aria’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her, out of Rue’s head.  She shivered, unable to recollect her thoughts.  
     The raven’s gravelly voice grated over her bones, “…I am sure we’d both like to see your wedding day as soon as possible.”  
     Rue lifted her chin again, pushing away memories that weren’t memories and swallowing back the sob that wanted to escape.  “Thank you, father.”

***

     Eyes closed, Aria stretched out her hand and placed it in her imaginary prince’s grip.  She rose up on demi-pointe in her black school shoes, pretending he stood behind her, retracing the steps she’d danced the night at the kriegerbrunnen while Edel burned.  _It was only a week, but I feel like that day was so  long ago._ She remembered again that moment when she, Aria not Tutu, danced on water to save the prince.  _It was only an illusion,_ she remembered.  The image of the lake had crumbled into darkness around them when Krähe left.  But still, _she_ had done it.  She remembered the moment she’d returned the heart shard of love, when Mytho had looked at her as if she were the most precious thing, and then…  
     She stumbled out of her pose, eyes still closed.  
     And then everything changed.  
     A single tear slipped free and slid down her cheek.  Angrily she dashed it away with the back of her hand.  She positioned her feet in fourth, stepping this time into the moves of the pas de deux she’d danced alone—that she’d only ever danced once with a partner:  Fakhir.  Only he wasn’t dancing anymore, was he?  Students had crowded the courtyard to watch him carry his belongings out of the dorms yesterday.  The headmaster himself had been there too, and Mr. Catt.  Because of yesterday he’d lost his role of Hilarion in the summer showcase.  He’d lost his place in class too and been suspended.  All because of Rue and… Mytho.  
     The look on Mytho’s face when Fakhir hit him haunted her dreams last night.  It hadn’t been the prince, she refused to believe that.  The prince could never look that… cruel.  And Krähe’s laugh, she couldn’t think of Rue laughing like that.  Shivers chased over her skin.  _Everything is falling apart.  
_     More tears spilled free and Aria stopped dancing.  She raised both hands to her face this time, furious at herself for crying.  _What good are tears anyway?  Useless, that’s what I am.  I tried to save Mytho and somehow, he’s changed.  It’s my fault Fakhir got suspended.  And Rue…_ well she’d tried to save Rue too, hadn’t she?  And for that her only reward was—a pulse of light like a flare from the sun ripped through her head and pain lanced through her chest, stealing her breath.  Aria’s eyes flew open.  She only just managed not to scream.  
     Mr. Catt stood facing her, arms crossed over his chest.  “An interesting way of cleaning the  studio, Miss Arima,” he commented.  
     Aria’s cheeks flamed and she twisted the damp rag in her hand with which she’d been washing windows.  “Sorry, I um…” she glanced away.  “I distracted myself.”  
     “So I see,” he muttered, quirking an eyebrow at her.  “Why is it that I always see your best dancing outside of your usual practices, Miss Arima?”  
     Her cheeks flamed hotter.  “I don’t know?”  
     He huffed out a breath.  “How long have you been on probation?”  
     She scrambled for a moment.  That really was something she should know.  “I’m not sure?”  
     Mr. Catt sighed heavily.  “Miss Arima, I have never in all my years of dancing known a student with so much potential and so little motivation as you.”  
     “Oh…” she fidgeted uncomfortably, “it’s not that I don’t have motivation, it’s just that—”  
     “Miss Baillieu seems to think that you are ready to rejoin your classmates in regular practices,” Mr. Catt cut her off.  “And Ms. Ziegenfuss agrees that you have been making progress in pointe class.   When you show up, that is.  You do seem to have made a marked improvement in your attendance and your grasp of the basics this past week, and since your instructors have chosen to take a chance in supporting it, I am removing you from the probationary class.”  
     “Oh,” Aria stared at him with wide eyes.  Of all the things she’d been expecting him to say, that wasn’t one of them.  “Th-thank you, Mr. Catt.”  
     He eyed the rag in her hand and the bucket of slop water.  “Your detention, however, remains.”  
     “Yes sir,” she answered timidly.  
     Mr. Catt hesitated.  “I would also warn you, Miss Arima, to be careful in your choice of friendships here at Gold Crown.  Having the right people around you is imperative for a young dancer to maintain her focus.”  
     She stared at him stupidly, “Ah, I, um… I don’t think Piqué and Lillie are really that bad.”  
     “I was not referring to Miss Piqué or Miss Hofmann.”  
     It took Aria a full minute to process his words.  “You mean Fakhir!?”  Sure, her detention today had resulted from her participation in yesterday’s fiasco, but it’s not like she always went around getting into fights.  And Fakhir certainly didn’t go around causing them all the time.  She chewed her lip worriedly, actually... that might not be true.  
     Mr. Catt looked uncomfortable.  “Consider my warning,” he advised, then he turned to leave her to her chores.  
     Aria blinked at his back, struck dumb for a moment.  She didn’t find her voice again until the instructor was almost to the door of the large studio.  “I’m really sorry about Mr. Nijinsky’s shoes!” she called out impulsively.  
     Mr. Catt froze.  He tilted his head down, almost but not quite turning back.  “Thank you, Miss Arima.”  And then he was gone.  
     Aria let out a breath, _I can’t believe that just happened.  
_     The door at the other end of the studio burst open and Lillie rushed into the room.  “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!  Did you _hear_ that Duck!?”  She was jumping up and down in her excitement and clapping her hands together.  “You’re off probation!”   
     Aria laughed as Lillie did a happy little dance in the middle of the floor.  “What are you even doing here, Lillie?” she asked.  “Classes ended an hour ago.”  
     Lillie stopped dancing long enough to turn her glowing face toward Aria.  “I was looking for Piqué.  We were supposed to go to the pizzeria, but she stood me up.  I thought maybe she came back to school for something, but then I saw her going off with Mytho into the woods.”  She paled and slapped her hands over her mouth.  “I don’t think I was supposed to say that.”  
     Aria felt her heart twist.  “Mytho and Piqué were going off into the woods together?”  
     Lillie nodded, looking miserable.  “I know you like him, Duck.  I wasn’t going to tell you, it just slipped out.”  
     A strange buzzing had taken up residence in her head and her pendant seemed to be vibrating against her sternum.  She’d seen it glow in response to a heart shard, she’d felt it burn in response to danger, but this was different.  It almost felt like a… warning?  She wet her lips, “You’re sure?”  
     Her friend nodded, “I’m sorry, Duck.”  Lillie’s eyes lit up.  “Maybe it’s not what I think?  I mean, it’s not like I actually saw anything, just them walking into the woods and—”  
     “Show me.”  Aria’s own voice startled her.  
     Lillie’s eyes went huge.  “What!?”  
     She swallowed and tried again, “Show me where they went.”  The vibrating pendant was practically buzzing now, and Aria closed a fist around it.  
     “I’m not sure that’s such a—”  
     “Now.”  Aria tossed the rag into the mop bucket and started for the door, forcing Lillie to jog to keep up with her.   
     “Duck, I don’t think that this is a good idea.”  
     Aria didn’t either.  It sickened her to think of one of her best friends with the prince.  Yet the now frantically vibrating pendant in her hand suggested that not going was an even worse idea.

***

     “U-um, what was it you wanted to show me?”  
     Mytho looked down at the girl at his side.  She was twisting her hands together, worry shining in her eyes.  _“She’s frightened,”_ the voice in his head murmured, _“calm her fears.”_ Darkness twisted in his soul and he stopped on the footpath that led deeper into the woods behind the school.  He swung around to face her, smiling when her eyes widened in surprise.  _“Not yet,”_ the voice warned.  _“Slowly, carefully.”  
_     With light fingertips he touched her chin.  She flinched away from him.  “Are you scared?” he asked, a touch of amusement in the words.  
     “I think I should go back,” Piqué muttered, trying to pull further away.  
_“Now,”_ the voice insisted angrily.  _“Do it now!”  
_     Mytho’s eyes glittered, “But we were just starting to enjoy ourselves.”  He grasped her arm with one hand as she tried to escape, capturing her jaw with his other.  He leaned toward her, his face mere inches from hers.  “Tell me, Piqué, you want this don’t you?”  
     Her grey eyes were huge and she tried to pull away.  “I-I—”  
     Mytho closed the distance, taking her mouth with his.  She fought at first, until the darkness curling through him curled into her.  He smiled against her lips when she stopped pulling away and leaned into him instead.  _“That’s it,”_ the insidious voice inside his head exulted.  _“See how sweet she tastes?  Imagine how much sweeter her heart will be.”  
__No.  
_     Mytho froze, pulling away.  
_Stop this!  
_     “Mytho?” Piqué blinked up at him with a dazed expression.  Somehow her arms had wound themselves around him.  
     The shadowy fog in his head started to lift.  He blinked at her in confusion.  
_“FINISH IT!”_ the voice inside raged.  
     A rustling in the bushes nearby drew his shattered attention, and a girl stumbled suddenly onto the path, tripped over a root, and went sprawling to her hands and knees a scant few steps away.  
     The girl in his arms startled.  “Duck?”  Her cheeks blazed red.  “What are you doing here?”  
     Mytho stared at the girl on the ground. _Aria?  
__“Forget the interloper, take the child’s heart!”  
_     Piqué’s arms tightened around him.  “What?” she demanded with a challenge, “Do you have a problem with this?”  
_Problem?_ Mytho blinked again.  Pain twisted in his heart.  
_“Stay in the darkness, prince,”_ the voice ordered, _“all you have to do is obey my commands and they’ll be no pain.”  
_     Aria was blushing furiously now, her face almost perfectly matching her hair.  “Oh, um, um, um…”  
     Piqué unwound one arm and turned toward the girl enough to prop her free hand on her hip.  “What?  Just what do you care if Mytho and I are dating?  That’s our business!”  
     Darkness closed in around his mind and the pain in his chest eased.  He sneered down at the girl.  _“That’s right,”_ the voice purred approvingly.  _“She is yours for the taking, prince.  See how she defends her territory?  She is ripe to be plucked.”  
_     Aria’s face went white.  Her eyes went to his.  “What?  Mytho, you like Piqué?”  
_“Get rid of the extra baggage,”_ the voice instructed firmly.  _“Finish taking the girl.”  
_     He curled a lip at Aria disdainfully and she flinched.  
     Aria’s feet stuttered forward a step.  “Mytho,” she whispered, “what’s happened to you?  Something strange is going on.”  
     Piqué went rigid, “What’s so strange about going out with me!?”  
     Aria blanched, “No!  That’s not what I meant!” she cried out, horror evident in her voice.  “I meant yesterday and stuff.  Mytho jumped out of the window himself, but—”  
_Jumped out the window?  
__“Don’t listen to her!”_ the voice was screaming now.  
     “You’re still saying that!?” Piqué exploded.  
     “And Mr. Catt’s shoes, Mytho—”  
     “Will you cut it out already?” Piqué burst out, letting go of Mytho to shove at Aria.   
     Aria, surprised at the attack, tripped backward over the same root and went down.  She hit the ground and pain exploded in his chest.  
     Mytho clutched at his heart, lurching sideways, and struggled to keep his feet.  Images flashed through his head, too fast to track.  A checkerboard floor.  A bloody battle.  A broken doll.  He gasped against the agony spearing into him.  
_“Give in to me!”_ the voice demanded.  
     He took another tormented step away from the girls.  “You two—argue—” he inhaled sharply again as another invisible sword skewered through him.  His eyes fell on Piqué, her lips still swollen from his.  Horror mixed with the pain inside him.  “What are you trying to make me do?” he moaned.  He forced himself to stay upright, to turn away, to go deeper into the woods and further from the girls.  The further from them he was, the safer they were.  
_“NO!”  
_     “Mytho, wait!” Piqué cried.  Footsteps pounded after him.  She was chasing him.  
_No._ He knew he couldn’t hold on for much longer.  “Stay away!” he cried out.  
     The footsteps ceased.  
     Silence for several more meters and then, _“You can only fight me for so much longer, prince.”_  
     The pain overwhelmed him, and the world went black.

***

     Fakhir stood in the square outside St. Godfrey’s staring up at the towering spire of the church while people passed him by on their way through the common errands of their lives.  Restlessness stirred in his soul.  He’d only been away from Mytho for one day.  Aside from the times the prince was taken by Krähe, it was the first full day he’d spent outside the prince’s company in over a decade, and for the first time in his life Fakhir found himself questioning that.   
     The bookmen never allowed him to question his mission.  They drilled a single-minded focus into him from the very beginning, from the moment the curse that befell Goldkrone Towne paused the clocks and froze the people in this village.  And yet, in fifteen years of research, they understood this curse no better than they had a decade and a half ago.  In a few short weeks, Princess Tutu and her interference had shown more light into the cracks of his reality than fifteen years in the bookmen’s tutelage ever had.  And in one night—no, less than that—the span of one brief conversation, Edel had turned everything he knew on its head.  
_“I don’t understand,”_ he’d whispered to her as she burned on this very spot.  
_“In time you will, and then you’ll know.  When kings become pawns and crows become swans, when light turns to darkness then you will know how the pen is mightier more than the blade, for the blade can break war but the pen can bring peace.  Then if there’s a grace to be found beyond death, glory will also be happiness.  
__“…defy your fate.”  
_     Fakhir blinked, rubbing one hand absently over the scars on his chest.  He’d had them as long as he could remember.  The bookmen had told him that they marked him as the knight from the story.  Kyron said it made him the knight reborn.  Yet Tutu had helped him remember a different version of events.  
_Footsteps behind him.  Feathers in front of him.  A curse.  An oath.  A scream.  
__Blood.  Pain.  Ripping.  Tearing.  
_     What was real?  
     His eyes fixed on the abbey adjoining the church, his gaze narrowed in upon it.  
_“I am Cundrie… Guardian of Godfrey’s Blade.  
__… I wonder if you fully comprehend the consequences of the course you’ve chosen here tonight.”  
_     Did he understand the consequences?  He looked down at his hands, hands which had held Godfrey’s sword, which had tried to shatter Mytho’s heart.  Hands that had broken that blade.  He thought the strange veiled woman was referring to his impending betrayal of the prince, but perhaps she’d meant something different altogether.  
_“Tell me, what does a young man such as yourself need with such a thing as Godfrey’s sword?”  
__“…saving the lives of all Goldkrone Towne, maybe more.  Maybe the world.”  
_     He meant those words.  
     Fakhir looked up at the abbey again, decision cementing in his mind.  With purpose he crossed the open space and rapped loudly upon its door.  A long moment stretched out, and then the sliding of a lock on the other side.  
     The door opened to reveal an older woman in the traditional grey garb and veil of the sisters.  She looked at him in surprise, “May I help you?”  
     “I’m looking for someone who lives here.”  
     A guarded expression came over her face, “The sisters here are—”  
     “It’s not a sister,” he quickly corrected her.  “Her name is Cundrie.  I don’t know what she looks like, but she always wears a veil across her face.”  
     Confusion swept over the sister’s expression for a moment, then understanding dawned in her eyes.  “You mean the widow?  I’m sorry, son, but she’s no longer with us.”  
     His hands tightened into impatient fists.  “Then where is she?”  
     The sister’s face tightened, her lips pursing.  “I do not mean she is not here.  She died.”  
     Cold flared in the pit of his stomach.  “What?  When?”  
     “Two weeks ago this Sunday,” the sister answered, already moving to close the door.  “I am sorry.”  
     “Wait—”  
     But the door closed and barred him from the abbey and answers.  
_She died!?  
_     Two weeks ago Sunday.  That would mean that she died on the very same day that he and Aria went down into the underground lake to rescue the prince from Krähe.  Something else Edel told him flashed in his memory.  _“_ _For one to pass safely through, another one must die.”  
_     He and Aria had both entered the strange passages beyond the Fool’s Mirror.  Edel had died for him, did that mean that Cundrie…?  
     Stiffly, Fakhir stumbled away from the abbey door, staring at it in growing horror.  _What the actual hell is going on in this town?_   There were no answers here.  Numbly he turned away, starting back over the square, back toward the smithy on the far side of town.  
     “Wait!” a voice called out behind him.  
     Fakhir stopped on the edge of Godfrey’s square and turned.  A different sister was running up to him, her veil whipping behind her.  She was young, not much older than the students at Gold Crown.   
     “Are you Fakhir Suziere?” the sister asked, panting as she skidded up to him.  
     He frowned at her, “I am.”  
     The sister  thrust an envelope toward him.  “This was found on the woman,” she explained.  “I-I think it’s for you.  No one opened it.”  
     He looked down at the wrinkled object in her hands, swallowing past the lump in his throat.  “How did she die?”  
     The sister’s face closed up.  “Suicide,” she whispered.  “She jumped from the bell tower.”  
     He flashed a horrified look at her.  “Jumped?”  
     “Yes.”  The girl sighed, looking contrite.  “The Bishop refused to inter her in the catacombs, she was buried in the pauper’s  cemetery without rites.  Anyway, I was there when… well, when she was found.  She was holding this, but the town patrol left it behind when they moved her.  I thought maybe, maybe it was important to her that someone have it, and I saw your name on it, so...” she thrust the thing into his hands.  
     Fakhir stared at it dumbly.  “Thank you.”  
     She hesitated.  “I’m Mary Malen,” she murmured.  “I’ve seen you around the school.  I don’t believe what they’re saying about you, I just—I thought you’d want to know.  I’m sorry.”  
     By the time he looked up, she was gone.  
     Fakhir turned his attention back to the envelope.  He was almost afraid of what it might hold, yet his shaking fingers tore it open all the same.  Inside was a single folded page with words printed upon it in a scrawling calligraphy.  Fakhir recognized it at once as an excerpted page from The Prince and The Raven.  He turned it over.  The other side held an illumination of the knight from the story being ripped in two.  Sickness churned in his stomach at the sight.  The mastery of the image didn’t escape him.  This wasn’t some reprinted mass-market illustration.  This page was from the original work.  
_“Defy your fate.”_  
     Four words were scrawled across the top of the expertly rendered illumination.  Four words that left him with more questions than answers: 

_Ink Fades.  Blood Remains._

***

     Something was seriously wrong with Piqué.  Aria had tried to reason with her friend on the school grounds, but after shoving her away for the second time, Piqué had run back to the dorms and locked herself into her room.  Neither she nor Lillie were able to entice Piqué back out again.  Lillie was worried but not in the same way Aria was.  She’d promised that Piqué would be alright again soon enough and disappeared into her own room for the night, leaving Aria with a growing ill feeling she couldn’t quite shake.  That’s why when, several hours later as she sat by the window in her room staring out at the moonlight casting dappled patterns over the courtyard and saw Piqué leaving the dorms, Aria threw on her shoes mindless of the fact that she was still in her nightdress, wrapped a robe around her shoulders, and raced out after her wayward friend.  
     Instinct and curiosity kept Aria from directly confronting her friend, instead she followed at a distance as Piqué wound through the streets of Goldkrone Towne in a seemingly random pattern.  Despite her circuitous route, the girl seemed to know exactly where she was going, not hesitating at any twist or turn.  Eventually she emerged on a wide street and Aria realized they’d circled around to St. Godfrey’s plaza.  Moonlight and the streetlights lit the square as bright as day and Aria ducked behind a shadowy corner to remain concealed.  She had to cover her mouth with her hand when she saw who Piqué was meeting.  
_Mytho?_ Her pendant began buzzing against her heart.  
     The prince approached from the far end of the street, strangely seeming to emerge from the shadows themselves.  He held his arms out wide and Piqué ran directly into them.  “I’m glad you got my note,” he spoke in a voice that just carried to Aria’s hiding place.  “I’m sorry about before.”  
     “It’s alright,” Piqué answered him breathlessly.  
     A smile Piqué couldn’t see slithered across the prince’s face.  “I truly, honestly need your love,” he murmured.  
     Piqué pulled back a little, a strange look almost like fear chasing across her face.  “A-alright.”  
     As Aria watched, Mytho cupped her best friend’s chin and swept his thumb across her lips.  “Are you afraid?” he asked in a voice that sounded far too smooth, far too urbane.  
     Even in the moonlight Aria could see her friend turn pale.  “No!  O-of course not!”  
     Another  sickening smile curled over Mytho’s lips, and then he ducked his head and—  
     Aria squeezed her eyes shut, an icky black feeling burning in her gut.  When she opened her eyes again Piqué no longer looked pale.  Instead her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were dazed, almost hypnotized.  
     “Piqué, promise to love only me,” Mytho whispered.  
     “Alright,” Piqué sounded breathless.  
     Aria started to back away.  Whatever was going on here, she knew deep down she didn’t want to witness what was coming next.  She ignored the pendant vibrating against her sternum and turned back the way she’d come.  
     “…promise me that you’ll hate everyone else.”  
     Aria’s feet froze.  
     “I will,” she breathed obediently.  “I promise to love only you and to hate everyone else.”  
     Her pendant went still, and Aria turned back around.  
     The smile on the prince’s face at Piqué’s words was just _wrong._   There was a dark, wicked gleam in his eyes, an exultant expression like the cat that got the cream.  Only he was a very big, very dangerous cat.  And the cream this time was her innocent friend.  Nausea replaced the icky black feeling churning in her gut.  
     “As proof then,” Mytho murmured, his words like a soft caress in the night.  With one finger he traced Piqué’s lips again, then drew a trail down her neck.  Aria felt her own skin shiver with revulsion at the possessiveness of his touch, but Piqué—staring at him like one in a trance—made no protest.  His exploration stopped just over her breastbone, and there he spread his palm on her chest.  “You’ll give me your beautiful heart, won’t you?”  
     Piqué’s eyes hooded, “Yes.”  
     A smile curved his lips.  “Good.”  Piqué leaned toward him as if pulled by an invisible string, but Mytho stepped away, spreading his arms wide at his sides.  
     Hot, black pain sliced into Aria’s skull, so swift and sudden it drove her to her knees.  She blinked up at the square, watching in incomprehension as shadows and feathers swirled around Mytho.  In one second he was the prince, and in the next he was… a raven prince.  Black hose replaced his white uniform pants, black half boots covered his feet.  His blue blazer was now a fitted black tunic, its hem and collar cut jagged to resemble sharp feathers.  Actual feathers adorned his shoulders like pauldrons.  Slim black gloves covered his hands, wrapping halfway up his forearms.  She choked on a scream at the sight.  
     “Then step forward into my arms!” Mytho cried out, as a dark altar formed at his feet, lifting him into the night.  “Give me your heart!”  
     Piqué stepped forward woodenly and started to dance.  Aria recognized the stiff steps of the Waltz of the Doll.  “If I can just have Mytho,” she whispered while she danced, speaking to herself.  “I don’t mind losing my heart.”  
     The raven prince’s evil leer grew wider.  “The more beautiful the heart,” he crooned, “the stronger the fragrance when it’s dyed in evil!”  
     Aria forced herself to her feet and grasped her pendant in one cold fist.  She hadn’t transformed into Tutu since that night at the lake.  The night Krähe had cracked her confidence, had forced her back into her own form though still in the garb of the faery princess.  She wasn’t even sure if she _could_ transform into the princess anymore.  But she was sure as tights and tutus going to try!  
     She took a running step forward, dredging up that _will_ from somewhere deep inside.  Power and purpose pulsed around her and she twirled through a golden waterfall of sensation, landing on pink pointe shoes in the square.  
     “Stop!” she cried out to Piqué desperately.  
     Piqué’s wide eyes swung toward her.  
     Tutu rose up en point and made the mime for dance.  She didn’t know what else to do.  “Please,” she begged, just wanting to get Piqué away from that dark altar and whoever the hell was standing on it.  “Please, come dance with me.”  
     Piqué blinked at her.  
     Hope surged in Tutu’s heart.  
     Shadows covered Piqué’s face and then, “No.”

***

     Fakhir sat at the desk in his room over Kyron’s smithy, moonlight and the flickering illumination of the lamp on the corner of the desk providing the only light while he pored over the dusty tome in his hand.  Words swam off the page,  swirling around his head.  He pushed the book aside and rubbed his eyes.  _I’ve been at this for hours,_ he realized.  It was well after midnight, but it’s not like he had class to go to in the morning.  The thought soured in his stomach.  
     A hard breeze struck the windows, rattling them in their frames.  The wind had been gusting all evening, promising a weather front to bring the coming autumn showers.  He ignored the wind and lifted the book again, returning to the story spiraling off the page.  Another breeze struck, this time blowing the window in.  
     Fakhir dropped the book and spun, his hand going for the sword propped by his bed as a figure dropped out of the night and perched on his windowsill.  He leapt to his feet, drawing the blade.  “Krähe!”  
     With a smirk on her lips, the crow bitch jumped backward out the window, alighting seemingly in midair over the street.  He stood at the window facing her, his sword in hand.  “You’re working intently,” she noted, glancing through the windows of his room to the lamp and the desk covered in books.  “Is the subject of your research princes?  Or is it ravens?”  
     Cursing the magic that kept her precious neck from the sharp edge of his sword, Fakhir growled in response.   
     Her gloating smile grew.  “Shall I tell you what the prince is moving towards becoming?”  
     “So you did do something to him!” the words rasped through his dry throat with a burning edge of fury.  
     She laughed lightly, shifting in the air until it seemed she sat upon a high, invisible chair.  She stretched one foot out, flexing her foot idly.  “The heart shard of love that Princess Tutu gave back to him?”  Red eyes flashed maliciously to his face, “That shard was soaked in a bath of the Raven’s blood.”  
     Cold and dread numbed the fingers holding his sword and froze his limbs.  “The raven’s blood?” he breathed.  “You—” his voice broke.  
     Krähe’s smile stretched wide, gleeful.  She was triumphing in his horror.  “My father was willing to part with some of his own blood for the sake of his daughter,” she mocked him with the words.  
_Father?_ Fakhir felt sick.  “You’re the raven’s daughter.”  He should have guessed.  He should have known.  
     She tossed her head carelessly.  “The prince will soon change,” she crooned.  “He’ll love only me.  And he’ll find a young and beautiful heart for my father, and he’ll offer it up to him as a sacrifice.  When the blood has finished permeating his whole heart, he will never go back to the way he was.”  
     Fakhir swallowed back a wave of nausea at her words.  Another thought stormed through his mind and clutched at his chest.  “Did you tell Tutu about this?”  
     “I should,” she mused.  “If I did that, I could make her suffer, couldn’t I?  Or perhaps it would be more effective to tell the prince that she is in truth a girl who is really a wretched excuse for a dancer.”  She laughed again.  “It was stupid of you to break the prince’s sword. Without that blade you can’t even hope to take his heart out, now can you?  But you’re only human after all,” she scorned.  “Maybe all you can do is look things up in books.”  She stretched to her feet and was swept away on the wind of a promising storm.   
     Fakhir stared after her, fury percolating slowly through his veins.  _She didn’t just come here to tell me that, did she?_   No.  Something more was going on here.  Something he was missing.  Whatever it was, he needed to find it.  Fast.

***

     “Tutu!” Mytho gasped at the sight of the beautiful princess.  She was like a beacon of light cutting through the darkness that shrouded his soul.  
_“Focus on the girl!”_ the dark voice in his mind commanded.   
     Pain swelled in his chest, a hot bloody flash of it, and then the shadows reasserted.  
_“Call up the servants, finish the sacrifice!”  
_     The raven prince blinked at the sight before him.  The girl, dancing obediently in time to his orders, and the recalcitrant faery princess trying to foil his plans.  He summoned the darkness, great black shadows formed wings at his back, and more shadows took form below.  A muster of crow… things formed at Pique’s feet and surged upward.  They lifted the girl into the air, her back arched over their upraised hands, her eyes closed.  She was ripe, she was ready.  He could hear the beating of her beautiful heart, he could smell its sweet fragrance.   
_“She’s perfect,”_ the voice reveled.  _“Harvest her heart and bring it to me.”  
_     The wings at his back fluttered restlessly, stretching, bending, ready to rip the girl’s heart from her chest.  
     “Piqué!” Tutu cried out, leaping toward her frantically.  
     Hate surged in the raven prince’s heart and he struck out at her with one great dark wing.  The faery princess was thrown aside, hitting the cobbles hard.  “Your pleas are useless!” he mocked her.  “Piqué herself wants to give her heart to me and become a sacrifice.  As long as her feelings stay this way…”  
_“NO!”_ the voice in his mind screamed.  
     Tutu rolled, pushed herself up on one hand, and stared at Piqué and the crow… things bearing her closer to the range of his wings.  Something had galvanized in the faery creature’s face.  She rose smoothly to her feet, balancing on the pointes of her shoes.  “Piqué stop!” she cried out, a hard note of command in her ethereal voice.  She shifted her weight onto her supporting leg and started to dance.   
     Power flowed from her movements.  It swirled around the square, banishing shadows, banishing darkness.  It fractured the umbra in his mind, spiderwebbing across it.  Light leaked in through the cracks.  
     “Is this truly what you desire?” Tutu spoke, and though her voice was soft it rang from the very heights of St. Godfrey’s bell tower.   
     It rattled all the way into his bones.  The raven prince’s iron resolve wavered.  
_“Fool!”_ the voice inside him fumed.  
     Tutu remained serene.  “Swanilda from Coppelia was a normal girl just pretending to be a doll. She was just like you, Piqué, a girl who likes chatting, and singing, and loves dancing.  A girl deeply in love.  If you really love Mytho then you must want to do all these things with him, right?  You say you don’t mind losing your heart, but that’s not the real you!”  
     Piqué’s eyes opened.  
_“No!  No!  No!  No!  Noo!”  
_     The raven prince could sense the moment the girl’s intentions changed.  The crow… things that held her aloft ceased their forward progress.  The shadows that formed them bled back into the ground.  Tutu dove forward and caught the girl as she collapsed senseless to the streets.  
     “NO!” the dark voice in his mind screamed the word through Mytho’s own lips and the shadows shrouding his soul crumbled briefly away.  Just as they shed from his soul, the shadows shed from his skin.  The guise of the raven prince fell away, the dark altar at his feet crumbled.  He lurched forward, falling toward the cobbles.  A slim figure darted in and arms—surprisingly strong—held him up.  
     “Mytho?” her soft voice soothed his tortured soul.  
     Darkness curled away from his mind and he stared into her face.  _His girl.  His beautiful girl.  Here.  Alive._ “Is this all a bad dream?” he gasped, tears stinging his eyes while white-hot pain bled through his body.  
_“You’ll suffer for this, foolish boy!”_ the dark voice in his mind promised malignantly.  
     “Another me inside me is…” shadows closed in.  “Tutu, what’s going to happen to me?”

***

     From his place beyond mortality, the spirit of Drosselmeyer gazed with dissatisfaction through the flowing sands of time.  He growled as he gripped the arms of his rocking chair and glared at the frail, gilt-edged mirror.  He’d been so close… so close to claiming the girl’s heart.  
     An unwelcome voice plagued his restlessness, “That didn’t go as planned, did it, old crow?”  
     “Go away!” he grumbled at the ghost of his old nemesis.  
     “If you had the power to banish me, you would,” the voice behind him gloated.  “Perhaps you should have considered that consequence before consigning me to this purgatory.”  
     “I hardly intended to join you, now did I?” the spirit groused.  He could feel powerlessness numbing him.  He needed that heart.  
     “You wasted too much energy on that little duck of yours, didn’t you?” his old enemy sounded supremely satisfied.  
     The spirit growled again.  “Your boy may have bested me this round, but he won’t hold out against me forever.”  He just needed a little more time, that’s all.  Just enough time for his little duck to find the last pieces of the prince’s heart and lift the curse.  Then… oh then, well, then the real fun would begin, now wouldn’t it?  
     Laughter answered his words, grating down his insubstantial spine.  “What do you know of forever, old crow?  Your time is running steadily out.  And when it does, I’ll still be here.”  
     The spirit raged and surged to his spectral feet, turning to face his ghostly tormentor.  There was… no one there in the darkness.  “Am I going mad?” he wondered, then cackled riotously.  He was already mad.  He turned back on the flowing sands of time and waved a hand over them.  “Show me,” he commanded.  “Show me a heart worthy of sacrifice.”


	5. Das Mädchen mit der Rose

_**The Maiden with The Rose**_  

     The door to the Antiquariat slammed shut behind Fakhir, startling a large tabby cat off his perch.  Water dripped off him as he stood in the entrance, his clothes soaked through from the storm outside.  But the thundercloud on his face rivaled any climatic violence the storm could hope to offer.   
     The man behind the sales desk looked up, his lined face underscored by the stub of a candle burning inches from his folded arms.  Why he sat there all day, Fakhir didn’t know.  No one bought anything here.  No one ever came in this store.  No one but the bookmen.   
     And him.  
     “I want the truth,” he growled without preamble.  
     The old man’s eyebrows went up.  Behind him a shadow shifted and morphed into the shape of a man, then another, flanking the old clerk.  “Truth about what, boy?”  
     Fakhir snarled.  “Either you know more than what you’ve told me, or you’re idiots.”  He crossed the store in five long strides and slammed his palms down on the counter.  “Fifteen years ago, you found me in the aftermath of an attack that slaughtered a quarter of this town, including my mother and father.  You knew about the curse, about the raven, you trained me to keep the curse in place and the raven sealed away.  When I found the prince, you knew it was his heart that was shattered which kept the raven sealed.  Fifteen years you spent with all of this—” he swept out one hand to indicate the amassed knowledge of the multitude of books stacked, piled, and shelved around him.  “—to study, to analyze and learn by.  So tell me!  Why do you age when everyone else in this town is locked in time?  Why have I?  How do you know what you know?  Where does your information come from?  Because it sure as hell doesn’t come from these!”  He lifted a book off the corner of the desk and threw it with startling accuracy at one of the shadowy corners, causing a hidden bookman to dodge aside.  
     The old man behind the counter eyed him with a sneer on his lips, “Why should I tell you anything, boy?  Fifteen years of training, and yet you’ve failed at every assignment we’ve given you.”  
     His hands clenched into fists.  “Mytho is infected with raven’s blood,” he hissed.  “Your precious curse is in jeopardy, and I get the feeling that’s the last thing you want.  Why is that, by the way?  Why are you so desperate to keep the curse in place?  It’s not like you’re benefitting from it.”  He glared around at the old men, men who’d been younger and stronger and in their prime fifteen years ago.  
     One of the bookmen standing behind the clerk advanced threateningly.  “It’s not your place to question us,” he warned.  
     “That’s right,” Fakhir answered in a low voice.  “You don’t want me to ask questions.  If it were up to you, I would be illiterate.  A blunt instrument to point at a target and eliminate.  Too bad for you I learned how to read!”  He drew a book out of the satchel he was carrying and tossed it on the desk.  “Do you want to explain to me why every version of this story outside this store is missing pages?”  
     The old man glanced down at the volume, “Printer’s error?”  
     Fakhir pushed away from the desk and struck a teetering tower of books, sending volumes and pages scattering into the deeper recesses of the store.  “Don’t give me that bullshit!” he shouted.  “You may think I’m an idiot but I’m not as stupid as you believe.  I know about your little book burning parties.  I’ve seen what you do at night when you think no one else is watching.”  
     One of the bookmen in the wings of the store moved forward, his eyes glittering in the eerie light.  “You’re walking a dangerous line, boy.”  
     Fakhir swung back around toward the clerk and laid a hand on the hilt of the sword he’d intentionally worn for this encounter.  “What’s it going to be?” he asked.   
     The clerk eyed him for a long minute.  “Raven’s blood?” he asked at last.  
     “Yes.”  
     “Interesting.”  The bookman’s eyes burned into him, “And just how was the prince’s heart infected this way?”  
     Fakhir’s face flushed, “Krähe.”  
     The old man shifted restlessly, “How?” he demanded.  
     Years of ingrained obedience forced an answer from his lips before he’d questioned it.  “She tainted a shard of his heart before Tutu returned it.”  
     The old man spit at his words.  “You are the fool then!” he swore.  “You had one mission—ensure the prince _never_ regained his heart.  You failed and brought this on yourself.  Why should we help you now?”  
     “Because you want the same thing I do.”  
     “That isn’t really true though, is it?”  A shadow in the depths of the store spoke softly.  “You want to save the prince, we want to save the town.  Our goals no longer align.”  
     “You’d let Mytho’s heart be corrupted by the raven’s blood?”  
     “As long as it remains shattered?” the clerk asked with a quirked brow, “Then yes.”  
     Fury boiled in his veins.  “Have you no honor?”  
     Silence answered him.  He felt more shadows lurking in the store, two to his left and one to his right.  He cast a look in both directions before fixing the old man behind the counter in another hard glare.  “Why does it matter so much to you that the curse should never be broken?”  
     The bookman straightened from his hunched posture, drawing himself up to his full height and levelling Fakhir with a withering glare.  “Sometimes _boy,”_ he drew the word out condescendingly, “A little curse is far more livable than a greater evil.  Trust me when I tell you that what’s inside Goldkrone Towne is better than anything beyond those walls.  We will do whatever it takes to ensure the prince’s heart remains shattered, the story remains stagnant, and the raven remains locked away.  You’re either with us, or against us boy!  Now which is it?”  
     Fakhir reached across the counter and grasped the old man’s shirt, hauling him forward to hiss in his face, “I stand with Mytho.”  He tossed the man aside and spun on his heel, pushing past the men crowding his exit, and swinging out into the storm raging beyond.  
     The old clerk irritably shook off hands that reached to help him.  “Fool,” he swore under his breath.  
     “He’s become a liability,” his lieutenant muttered.  “An unsheathed weapon is as much a threat to the one that holds it as it is to its target.”  
     “We should get rid of him,” another agreed.  
     “Not yet,” the clerk snapped.  “This sedition didn’t just pop up out of nowhere.  Something is behind his disloyalty and I have a suspicion that _something_ is a certain girl.  He wouldn’t be the first soldier to fall prey to a pretty face.  He isn’t the threat here, not yet.  Tutu is.  She must be stopped, and he’s the only connection we have to her.  Let him run back to his princess, let him lead us to her.  Then we can make sure once and for all that this story never reaches its conclusion.”

***

     “I still can’t believe you kissed Mytho,” Lillie sighed.  
     “Ugh!” Piqué covered her face with her hands.  “I did, didn’t I?  What was I thinking?  I must have lost my mind or something.  Maybe it was one of those twenty-four hour bugs people get.  Those can make you go crazy, can’t they?”  
     “Or maybe you hit your head on something,” Lillie suggested helpfully.  “Do you remember hitting your head yesterday?”  
     Piqué frowned, “Not until last night.  I must have hit my head last night, right Duck?”  
     Aria, walking between her two friends with both hands on the oversized umbrella she held over their heads to keep off the deluge, gave Piqué a distracted look.  “What?”  
     “Last night,” Piqué elbowed her.  “You said I hit my head and you brought me back to the dorms, isn’t that right?  That’s why you spent the night on my floor.”  
     She chewed her lip distractedly, “Yeah, that’s right,” Aria agreed.  Only it wasn’t really.  Piqué didn’t hit her head, she was… brainwashed or something.  And if Princess Tutu hadn’t intervened her friend would have sacrificed her heart, _whatever that means,_ to the raven prince—who she still couldn’t think of as Mytho.  Mytho would never do anything like that.  Yet it _had_ happened.  She chewed her lip again, worry and guilt gnawing at her stomach.  Aria didn’t know if Piqué would be _Piqué_ again when she woke up after the events in St. Godfrey’s square.  That’s why she’d stayed in her friend’s room to watch over her.  Aria didn’t mind keeping the secret of who she was from her friends until now.  If Piqué had known she was Princess Tutu yesterday, that Mytho was the prince from a story, that Rue was Krähe, then maybe Aria would have been able to warn her about the danger before it came down to the confrontation that nearly cost her friend her heart.   
     Piqué and Lillie continued to chatter, with Aria offering only vague mutterings to the conversation, as they reached the ballet school and dressed out for morning classes.  Classes Aria would join her friends for, now that she was off probation.  She should be excited.  But classes didn’t matter.  Gold Crown didn’t matter.  With a sharp jolt Aria realized the only thing that really mattered to her right now was finding out what was going on with Mytho.   
     “I’ve always thought he was so much more interesting than Mytho, anyway,” a voice roused Aria from her troubled thoughts.  
     She turned her head to see the girl from the advanced class who’d confronted her before.  _The headmaster’s daughter,_ she reminded herself.  
     Heidi was tucking her hair up into a braided bun, checking her expression in the mirror hanging on the inside of her locker door as she spoke to another girl from the advanced class who looked to have a lot less interest in the conversation.  “I mean, I like Rue and all that, but I never understood why she was so into him.  Fakhir is by the far the better dancer, and let’s face it, he has so much more to offer a girl than Mytho.”  
     “Ugh,” another girl—Aria thought her name was Mina—said.  “How can you possibly _like_ him?  He practically assaulted Mytho the other day and threw him out the window, and then he attacked Rue on the quad in front of _everybody!”_   She slammed her locker door.  “He’s a juvenile delinquent.”  
     “Not so juvenile as some people,” Heidi sniffed.  
     Piqué leaned toward Aria, whispering in her ear.  “Not that I’d ever openly admit to agreeing with anything that witch says, but she does have a point about Fakhir.”  
     “Yeah,” Lillie replied sotto voce.  “He does have that whole air of mystery and danger, doesn’t he?”  
     “And that gloomy, brooding thing,” Piqué answered dreamily.  
     Aria cast them both an aggravated look.  _I need new friends.  
_      The loud shutting of another locker startled their whispered conversation into silence.  “I’m heading to practice,” the other girl told Mina and Heidi in a soft voice.   
     “What do you think, Freya?” Heidi demanded, “Mytho or Fakhir?”  
     The soft-spoken Freya shrugged, “I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation, and I don’t gossip.”  With that she swept gracefully away.  
     “Score one for Freya!” Piqué exulted as Heidi’s face flushed an unflattering shade of red.  
     Aria pushed past her friends, “She has a point,” she muttered, heading for the hallway.   
     A commotion was taking place as Aria pushed through the door, a crowd gathered on both sides of the wide hall.  Boys and girls were whispering in hushed voices, and behind her more girls pushed out of the locker room to witness the excitement.   
     Curiosity and dread warred inside her as Aria shifted to her tip-toes to glimpse what had caused the stir.  A gasp caught in her throat at the sight of Mytho carrying Rue out of one of the smaller practice studios.  
 _“It’s Mytho and Rue!”  
_ _“What happened!”  
_ _“What?  Is Miss Rue hurt?”  
_ _“I’m so jealous.”  
_ _“Mytho is so wonderful!”  
_ _“If he’d carry me that way, getting hurt might not be so bad.”  
_ _“I want to be held by Mytho like that too!”  
_      Aria threw an aggrieved look around at the whispering crowd.  _This school needs new hobbies.  
_      Careless of the whispers surrounding him, Mytho swept through the crowd, cutting so close by Aria she could reach out and touch him.  She opened her mouth to say something, but words died on her tongue.  For one second his eyes met hers and there was something _wrong_ in those eyes.  Something that made her want to shrivel up and crawl away.  She felt the blood rush from her head at that cold look… and then he was gone, presumably heading for the infirmary.  
     Her head swung back toward the practice studio as if looking for an explanation.  Mr. Catt stood in the hallway now, his arms crossed over his chest and his expression grim.  His gaze swept over the gathered crowd—almost all the ballet students looking on.   
     “I have unfortunate news,” he announced.  “It appears Miss Kerrane is injured and will be unable to dance the part of Giselle in the upcoming performance for the summer showcase.  As her understudy is currently cast as Myrtha,” he gave a nod toward Freya who turned pink, “we will be holding open auditions tomorrow afternoon from those members of the corps de ballet for a new Queen of the Willis.”   
     “That’s not fair!” Heidi’s strident voice rang out behind Aria.  She pushed past, elbowing Aria on the way, and forced herself to the front of the crowd.  “I understudied for Giselle too.  Besides, the corps has practiced with _Freya,”_ she tossed a dirty look at the soft-spoken danseuse.  “Replacing Myrtha now would throw off the whole aesthetic, it’s Rue’s part that should be recast.”  
     The glare on Mr. Catt’s face could cut through diamond.  “Miss Hiegl, _I_ am the director of this school and this production, if you have a problem—”  
     “I’ll talk to my father,” she interrupted imperiously.  
     More whispers broke out, all of which were silenced at a sharp look from Mr. Catt.  A slow smile replaced the anger on his face.  “Very well, Miss Heigl.  We will hold open auditions for Giselle _and_ for Myrtha.  The young lady who dances the part best shall be our Giselle and Mytho’s partner while Miss Kerrane recovers,” his eyes went to Freya again as if he had no doubt who that would be.  “Second place will be rewarded with the role of Myrtha.”  
     Heidi’s face reddened.  
     Mr. Catt ignored her and cast a dark look around at the students, “Until then, I suggest you all get to class.  You have thirty seconds before you’ll be late.”  
     Chaos exploded as students rushed in different directions to reach their respective studios before the bell tolled the hour.  Aria was left frozen in place, dread uncoiling in a thick black rope in her gut.  Her eyes went to the end of the hall where Mytho had carried Rue.  _Is she really hurt?_ She remembered the cold look in Mytho’s eyes.  _Or is this a more involved deceit?_  
     “Miss Arima!”  
     She jumped and spun to face the ballet director, “M-Mr. Catt?”  
     He glared at her, “Class.  Now.”

 

     It wasn’t until the early afternoon that Aria was able to break away from her classes, and by then the feeling of dread had morphed into a growing apprehension that made the skin between her shoulder blades itch.  She checked the infirmary first, but Rue wasn’t there and neither was Mytho.  Sister Mary Malen was on duty again, and she claimed to have not seen either student since wrapping Rue’s ankle.  She checked the dorms, but Rue wasn’t there either, and by then her pendant was buzzing with that same strange _warning_ she’d felt before.  
     Returning to school, since that was the last place Aria had seen either of them, she managed to successfully dodge Mr. Catt and the other faculty members as she continued her search, wishing that at times like this her pendant would be a little more _helpful_.  She couldn’t imagine that Mytho and Rue would have gone anywhere but the school grounds or the dorms at this time of day, but then what did she know?   
     Her search deteriorated down to her simply wandering the woods that backed the school all the way to the town wall hoping she’d get lucky, when the sound of soft voices drew her attention.  The pendant buzzing inside her closed fist gave a soft jolt, and Aria whipped around.   
     “Put me down, already,” an irate voice drifted toward her, “no one can see us back here.”  
     Aria crept stealthily forward, using a prickly evergreen bush for cover, and spotted two figures near the wall.  _Rue and Mytho!_   As she watched, Mytho bent and put Rue on her feet.  
     Rue bent down and rubbed at her wrapped ankle, “This thing itches,” she complained, then bent down and unwrapped her foot, flinging the bandage away.  “It’s not so easy pretending to be injured.”  
     Aria clapped a hand over her mouth to suppress the sound of surprise.  _Pretending!  She did lie!_ Knowing she was right didn’t make her feel any better though.  
     Mytho stood by, watching Rue with an expression of aloof disinterest.  “Yet you did such a fine job of it.”  
     Rue preened.  “I did, didn’t I?”  Then her eyes narrowed, “It will mean nothing though, if you don’t do it right this time.”  
     “I know, Krähe,” Mytho growled back.  
     Shock froze her in place as her heart pounded in her chest.  _He called her Krähe.  He knows who she is!_   Aria crept closer, trying to get a better look at what was going on.  For a moment a tree blocked her view, and when she’d passed it the small clearing was empty.  _Where did they go?_    
     She waited several minutes in silence.  When no one appeared, she stepped into the clearing and looked around.  Footprints and the discarded bandage remained, but no Rue or Mytho.  Aria looked around, dread and apprehension coalescing into fear in her chest.  Picking a direction at random, Aria started to run.  
     No sign of Rue or Mytho appeared in the woods around her as she searched, at last skidding to a stop and breathing hard.  “Do what right?” Aria gasped, breathing hard after her sprint.  _Steal a heart?  But for what?_ She was missing too much information, and consequently didn’t know what she needed to do.  Tears stung her eyes.  “I’m failing, aren’t I?”  
     She wished Edel were here.  Edel had always aided her at times like this, but now there was no aid to find and Aria felt lost.  What was she supposed to do?  How could she help Mytho?  What was even going on?  She didn’t know anymore.  Straightening up from her hunched posture, she wiped the tears from her eyes and noticed a flash of color through the trees up ahead.   
     Heart tripping in her chest, she hurried forward.  Maybe it was them!  When she reached the edge of the trees, however, her feet stuttered to a stop as her eyes beheld the most wondrous sight she’d ever seen.  Winding paths wove through beds overflowing with white irises, red anemone, yellow tulips, orange primroses, green gladiolus, blue hydrangeas, indigo polyanthus, purple hyacinths, black dahlias, and various other flowering plants Aria had no name for.  The pristinely cultivated riot of color lay hidden in a sweeping curve of weeping willows.  Here and there small sculptures and stone benches lay hidden amongst vibrant foliage.  Aria’s breath caught in her throat at the impossible beauty of the sight before her.  
     A girl stood in the garden, her long blonde hair falling in a golden wave around her shoulders that shone as a distinctive beacon in this world of color.  She hummed a lilting tune as she worked, trimming plants and watering beds, yet somehow not a single speck of dirt stained her hands or clothes.  She twirled in place as she worked down the beds, adding words to her song enticing the amazing flowers around her to bloom and grow.  
     “Wow,” Aria breathed in awe, unable to help herself.  
     The sound of her exclamation drew the girl’s attention and she spun.  It was Freya, the student from the advanced class who’d rebuffed Heidi that morning.  “Who’s there?” the girl called out.  
     Blushing furiously, Aria stepped further into the garden where she could be seen.  “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,” she babbled.  “I was just walking through the woods and looking for something, or getting lost, but I didn’t really find it anyway and then I saw this garden and it was pretty, and your singing was pretty too just like you.  I mean, I think these flowers are really lovely I didn’t even know there was a garden here, I’ll just g—”  
     “It’s okay,” Freya said with a soft smile, her green eyes shining brightly, “This garden belongs to everybody.”  
     Aria’s already hot face burned hotter.  “So pretty…” she murmured.   
     Freya’s soft smile grew dreamy and her attention turned to the vibrant blooms that surrounded her.  With the fresh sunlight—washed clean from the morning’s storm—glowing around her she looked like some kind of goddess of life or earth.  “Aren’t they?”  
     “Oh, I didn’t mean them.”  Aria slapped a hand across her mouth, blushing all over again.  _I am seriously a dolt._  
     The girl gave her a funny look.  
     Aria dropped her hand, eyes wide.  “I mean of course the flowers are pretty, Miss—”  
     “Call me Freya,” the senior student told her, her milk and cream complexion coloring prettily with the faintest tinge of strawberry.  
     A smile curved her own lips.  “My name’s Aria.”  She drooped a little, “Though you’d probably know me better by what everyone calls me, and that’s Duck.”  
     Freya’s smile widened, “Hello Aria.”  
     Her drooping spirits brightened immediately.  When she realized she was just standing there staring and not saying anything, Aria cleared her throat uncomfortably and looked away.  Her eyes landed on a bright cascade of primroses which shouldn’t even be blooming this late in the year.  Everything about this garden seemed impossible, including the gentle spirit that inhabited it.  Her own thoughts caused her blush to deepen.  “This is amazing.  Did you grow all these flowers, Freya?”  
     Freya laughed delightedly.  “Flowers bloom on their own.  I simply pray:  Bloom prettily, bloom abundantly.  And so they do.”  
     “Wow,” she breathed again.  She glanced back at Freya, “I’m sorry about this morning.  It seems unfair you should have to audition for a part you already have.”  
     Freya shrugged.  “I love ballet, just as I’m sure you do.  But it doesn’t bother me.  If someone else is better for the part, then they should dance it.”  She leaned down, “It’s like this,” she said, trimming back the overhanging leaves of a bush to reveal the delicate bluebells beneath it.  “Sometimes one plant has to be cut back to reveal the beauty of another.”  
     Aria was captivated by the simple philosophy, “That’s beautiful,” she murmured.  “You must really love flowers.”  
     Freya tossed her another gentle smile, “I think it would be wonderful if the world were full of flowers, wouldn’t it?”  She frowned then, “Shouldn’t you be heading back to school, the juniors have pointe class in a few minutes, don’t they?”  
     “Oh!” Aria’s eyes went wide, “You’re right!”  She turned back toward school but paused at the edge of the garden, “Say Freya?”  
     The girl looked up at her, “Yes?”  
     Aria fidgeted nervously, “Would you… want to be Mytho’s partner?”  
     She shrugged, “Not particularly.  I’ll be dancing tomorrow for my own role as Myrtha.”  
     A strange relief percolated through her veins and Aria relaxed.  She gave the girl one last grin and a jaunty wave, calling “Good luck!” over her shoulder as she hurried back toward school.  Whatever Rue was up to, hopefully the gentle gardener wouldn’t get caught in Krähe’s plot.   And hopefully Aria could figure out what that plot was before anyone else got hurt.


	6. Das Mädchen mit den Emailaugen

 

 _ **The Girl with The Enamel Eyes**_  

     Despite Freya’s warning, Aria was still late for pointe class, earning her yet another afternoon of detention.  Fortunately, she now had cleaning the ballet school down to a fine science, and what would have taken her a weekend to finish now only required a couple hours hard labor.  As she carried the bucket of mop water out to the breezeway to dump over the side into the verdant grass below, she remembered the happy way Miss Freya had gone about her work in the garden and sighed wistfully.  _I wish I could be like that._ She made a face at the now empty bucket, “Of course her work looks like more fun than mine.”  
     “You don’t have it, zura!”  
     A loud voice shook her out of her reverie and Aria spun in place, searching for the speaker.  The breezeway was empty.  Chills swept down her spine.  “Hello?”  
     “Hello zura.”  
     She spun again at the sound of that voice right behind her.  Again nothing.  Her heart started to race.  “Who’s there?”  
     “Just me zura.”  
     Invisible spiders skated over her skin and she felt a tug at her skirt.  Jumping in fright, she spun around to again see nothing but the growing shadows of the school as the sun sank into a cloud bank to the west.  Another tug on her skirt and she screeched, jerking in the opposite direction.  
     “It’s not here, zura.  Where did you hide it zura?”  
     “Huh?”  Aria looked down, way down, and beheld a doll-like child, her wide blue eyes staring innocently up from a cherubic face.  The child’s pale hair was cut into a simple style which hung loose around her face, and she wore a little toy drum over her shoulders.  Aria’s first nonsensical thought on seeing the girl was _who would give a child a drum?_   Her second was more practical.  “What’s not there?”  
     The little girl blinked up at her.  “Your duck’s tail zura.”  
     “What!?”  Aria’s voice climbed several octaves.  “What do you mean _duck?”_  
     “Where is it zura?” The child reached for her, grabbing onto Aria’s skirts with two chubby fists and gave a great pull to the accompanying sound of ripping material.  
     “Hey!”  Aria called out, or it’s what she meant to say.  What actually came out of her startled throat was a horrible sort of squawk.  Pins and needles, flames and ice, and she transformed into an awkward little duck.  
_Bollywocks,_ the little duck thought irritably, struggling out of the heavy pile of clothes with real effort.  Her heart gave a heavy thump when she tossed the last layer off her head only to come nose to bill with the child who’d landed her in this predicament.  The girl’s wide eyes were only inches away now, staring at the duck with a rapturous expression of awe.  
     “You’re a duck zura!” She clapped delightedly and grabbed the hapless duckling up in rough hands.  
     The little duck gave another panicked squeak and flapped wildly, trying to break free.  
     “Oh!  There’s your tail zura!”  
     A chubby fist closed over her tail and pulled, extricating a single white feather which floated away on a soft breeze.  Squawking in protest, the little duck redoubled her frantic struggles against the manhandling, and managed to break away.  She landed in a lump at the edge of the railing.  The child reached for her again and, despite not having flight feathers yet, the little duck dove off the breezeway to freedom below.  It was only a drop of seven or eight feet and she half floated, half flapped madly to land in the luckily soft grass beneath.  
     Looking up she caught sight of the child leaning through the railing, her little mouth formed into a perfect O of surprise.  “Coming zura!” she cried out and toddled away.  
     With another squawk of fright, the little duck tumbled to her feet and rushed away, dashing into the woods to hide before the child could find her.  She watched from the shelter of a prickly holly bush as the child reached the space beneath the breezeway and looked around.  For a moment or two she searched, and then shrugging, she produced a pair of little drumsticks and toddled off, banging loudly on her toy drum.  
     The little duck breathed a sigh of relief and made her way back to the breezeway and her clothes.  Luckily there were still a few drops of water at the bottom of the mop bucket, enough to transform herself back into a girl.  Twice lucky, there was no one there to witness the transformation.  Aria had no idea how she would have explained being found naked on the breezeway, and shuddered to consider the detention she would have earned for _that_ debacle.  
     Hurrying to put away her cleaning items before the strange child could return to terrorize her further, Aria heard the sound of a gramophone echoing from one of the studios she’d cleaned.  Curious who was still at the school at this hour, she crept down the hallway and peeked into the studio.  At the far end of the room stood Freya, which wouldn’t be so odd given the upcoming auditions, but she wasn’t alone.  Mytho was there too.   
     “I’m not really hoping to be cast as Giselle,” Freya was saying.  Mytho had her pressed up to the mirror, her back to the corner of the room, and she didn’t look particularly comfortable with the situation.  
     “Do you hate me so much?” he asked in that same smooth voice he’d used on Piqué the night before.  
     Freya paled, “Of course not!”  
     Mytho leaned closer to her and Freya backed a step away.  Only she didn’t have anywhere to go.  He caged her in, bracing his hands on the mirror on either side of her head.  “Your beautiful heart makes beautiful flowers bloom,” he murmured softly, his face only inches from hers, voice echoing off all the wood and glass and empty space of the room.  “If we put our abilities together, I’m sure we could make a new kind of flower bloom that no one’s ever seen.”  
     Aria’s stomach flipped over, the taste of acid in her mouth.   
     “Um, Mytho, I think maybe you should—” Freya tried to push him away—or at least that’s how it looked to Aria—but instead of retreating, he closed what little distance there was between them.  
     “Nobody else has a heart so beautiful as to have the desire to make the world happy with dancing and flowers.  Surely even you believe that, don’t you?”  
     She shook her head, eyes wide.  “I can’t say I do.”  
     “It’s alright to think that,” Mytho went on, voice low and seductive.  He brought one hand down and ran the back of his knuckles over her cheek.  She flinched at his touch.  Both his hands came down then and settled on her shoulders.  
     “Mytho, no—”  
     Aria watched, frozen in place as Mytho pressed his mouth over hers, ambivalent to Freya’s meager struggles.  Horror followed closely by rage flushed through her system and she pushed the door open in fury and stepped inside, only to stop when Mytho pulled away from her.  His hands slid down Freya’s arms and captured her hands in his own.  A dreamy look had come over Freya’s face.  
     “You’re different from all those nobodies,” he assured her, pulling her to the center of the dance floor and into his arms.  They started to dance in time to the music still tinkling out of the gramophone.  “And you’ll ace the audition and be cast as Giselle to dance at my side.”  
     Freya’s arm went around his neck as he embraced her in their intimate pas de deux, “I will?”  
     “That’s right,” he murmured in her ear, “everyone around you is your enemy.”  
_What am I watching?_ Aria wondered wildly.  A moment ago, it looked like Freya had wanted Mytho to stop.  Hadn’t she?  So why was she—  
     “Love only me,” Mytho intimated, his tender tone a harsh juxtaposition to his next words, “and hate everyone else.”  
     Darkness and shadows crept in at the edges of the room, and a strange sort of power built in the air around them.  Fear sent tingles shooting through  Aria’s limbs, and as she watched, horrible, twisted flowers began to bloom right out of the hardwood floor.  
     “Yes!” Freya cried out.  
     Aria shook her head as the demented flowers multiplied, filling the room from wall to wall.  “Not again!” she swore, sweeping into the studio on a swift pirouette.  As she moved, she changed, transforming into Princess Tutu.  Immediately she felt the malevolent _evil_ of the blooms at her feet.  Their blossoms turned as one toward her, thorns burst from their black vines as sharp as razor blades.  
     Yet Freya seemed delighted by the horrible things.  “The room is full of flowers we’ve never seen before, isn’t it Mytho?” she exclaimed happily.  
     Mytho twisted, much as the flowers had, and turned his face toward Tutu.  He gasped her name, shadows and light chasing each other through his eyes.  
     “Miss Freya!” Tutu called desperately, held back from intervening by the terrible creations at her feet.  She tried to insinuate her power over them, but they resisted with gloating arrogance.  “Will you hate everyone?” she asked, “But the real you doesn’t want to hate even one person, does she?”  She _had_ to be right about that.  The Freya she’d seen today wouldn’t harm a fly.  
     Mytho stepped away from the girl, his hands going to his chest as his face twisted in pain.  
     Freya’s eyes seemed to clear too, the dreamy expression on her face replaced with one of confusion.  “No,” she realized.  She looked to Mytho and her expression became even more conflicted.  “But Mytho says that he desires it, so…”  
     Behind her, the prince made a pained sound and he staggered.  His head came up, his eyes cutting past Freya straight to Tutu.  “Help me, please—” he begged.  
     Tutu’s heart twisted.  “Mytho,” she whimpered, holding her hand out to him.  She longed to go to his side, but the awful flowers stood between them—an impassable wall of thorns and horror.  
     “No!” Mytho shouted suddenly, and in a black flash of feathers he disappeared.  The flowers around them burst into so many shards of shadow and faded as well, and Freya alone in the center of the studio fainted dead away.  
     “Miss Freya!” Tutu cried again, springing across the distance to catch the girl before she collapsed.  She looked up, her eyes searching the shadowy corners of the studio, but Mytho was gone.  _What just happened here?_

***

     Rue cringed as her feet crunched over the uneven ground, knowing it wasn’t leaves that made that horrible sound.  It was bones.  Suppressing her own revulsion, she continued on, her shoes crushing the delicate bones underfoot as she made her way to the crumbling foundation that loomed up through the shadowy night.  “Father?” she called out uncertainly.  
     A great rustling of feathers accompanied a shifting shadow, and her eyes focused on the giant shape perched on the corner of that foundation.  “Is it done?” the raven asked in his gravelly voice.  “Have you brought me a heart?”  
     Rue shuddered, cursing Princess Tutu again for her interference.  Mytho could have had the heart tonight if that nuisance hadn’t intervened.  “Very soon now, father,” she soothed him.  “We have chosen a lovely one this time, even better than the first.”  
     The raven lifted his head, his long black beak piercing the shadows of the night, and sniffed.  “What a lovely fragrance,” he sighed.  “I can smell the sweet scent from here.  I can hardly stand it.”  
     She shuddered again, her throat working.  “This time I won’t let you down, father,” she vowed.  “I will bring you a heart that shines black.”  
     A rough laugh grated over her nerves.  “And that will be the time that your efforts shall reap the reward, my daughter.”  
     Joy surged through her.  _Then I will marry the prince!_ She bowed her head, a smile twisting her lips.  “Yes, dear father.”

***

     On the corner of Meerhäschen and Mitgefühlgasse Aria hesitated, her eyes on the house backed right up against the town wall in the shadow of the Nächstenliebe gate tower.  She hadn’t seen Fakhir since that day in the quad when he confronted Rue and was suspended.  She hesitated to go to him now, not sure how she would be received.  He hadn’t been in the best of moods when he was banished from the school.  _When Mytho and Rue worked together to get him suspended, that is._  
     Aria chewed her lip and fretted.  “I’m kind of just showing up,” she muttered to herself.  “I don’t even know if he’s home.”  But she needed to talk to him.  No one else knew what was going on, she didn’t even know if Fakhir did.  She only knew she needed help.  Something was seriously wrong with Mytho and she had to fix it.  Now.  
     A clamor sounded from the street behind her and Aria turned in time to see the strange little child from yesterday toddling toward her banging happily upon the toy drum.  And once again, just as before, a strangled squawk tried to make it past her lips.  She clapped both hands over her mouth lest it escape.  “Her again?” she squeaked instead.  “What is she doing here?”   
     The little girl spotted her, and her eyes went wide.  “It’s you zura!” she crowed delightedly, and rushed across the street.  
     Aria cried out again, tried to retreat and tripped over the curb.  She just barely managed to choke back another squawk and wound up on her hands and knees on the rough cobbles.   
     “Ahem.”  
     She tipped her head back to look up, up, up… as a throat cleared nearby.  Her face turned red when she recognized Fakhir standing over her.  He wasn’t in his school uniform—of course he wouldn’t be since he’d been suspended.  Instead he was dressed in a pair of rough black trousers that were patched and burned in places, and a tattered blue shirt missing one sleeve, the ragged edges of where repair had clearly been attempted apparent.  His eyes crinkled as he took her in, “What are you doing here?”  
     “Um…” she sat back on her heels, her palms stinging where she’d skinned them, mind going blank at his question.  “Hi Fakhir!” her voice was still several octaves too high and she winced at the sound of it.  
     The little girl drummed up behind her, dashing happily forward and throwing her arms in the air.  “Fakhir!”  
     Aria stared in shocked awe as the child ran right up to Fakhir and threw her little arms around his leg.  Her head barely came up past his knee.  Fakhir, for his part, was completely unfazed by the greeting.  “I-I c-came to s-see you?” she stammered, eyes still pinned on the bizarre sight of the girl.  “B-but this g-girl—”  
     The child, still hugging Fakhir’s leg, looked up at him with ecstatic adoration and announced in her loudest voice, “She has butt zura!”  
     Aria’s mouth went dry and her face burned.  
     Fakhir also looked a little embarrassed and a lot entertained at the same time, which only made her blush hotter.  He looked down at the little girl, brow knitting into a stern expression.  “Did you do something to her?” he demanded, clearly trying to discern why Aria was still sitting in the street for no apparent reason.  
     The little girl stepped away from him and began banging loudly on her drum.  “I was looking for her tail and I found her butt zura!”  Her voice echoed off the buildings.  
     Aria’s face now felt like it was on fire, and she had the overwhelming urge to crawl into a hole somewhere and pull the grass in after her.  
     Beside Fakhir, the little girl was basically just screaming now as she pounded arrhythmically on the poor tortured drum.  
     “Now look you,” Fakhir admonished.  He reached down and rested a hand on the little girl’s head.  She looked up at him, and between one breath and the next, his hand twisted and the little girl’s head spun in a full one-hundred-eighty degrees!  
     Aria screamed.  Or that’s what her instinct intended.  Instead a startled squawk escaped her defenses and fire and liquid poured through her bones and simmered under her skin.  The little duck stumbled through the darkness and heavy weight of her school uniform, flapping her wings wildly and tossing her head to escape.  She couldn’t breathe fast enough, her heart pounded in her chest.  There wasn’t enough air.  She knew she was panicking but couldn’t stop.  Loud, frightened squawks chased one another from her throat as she struggled, pinned by all those clothes.  
     The weight was suddenly plucked away, and she looked up into Fakhir’s worried eyes.  “Calm down,” he urged.  
     But she couldn’t calm down.  He’d just killed the child.  She’d seen it with her own eyes.  The little girl’s head had gone _all the way around!_ He’d broken her neck.  The little duck’s frantic gaze swept the street, expecting to see the mangled body and broken drum.  But the body was gone.  
     “Hey,” Fakhir reached a hand toward her.  
     The duck backed quickly away, hit a wall, and freaked out all over again.  
     From up the street in the direction of the smithy came the patter of little feet, and the next thing the duck knew was a cascade of cold water that soaked her, all her clothes, and Fakhir who was in the line of fire.  
     After the stinging, tingling sensation passed, Aria blinked up through her soaked tresses to see the little girl—clearly alive—staring happily back at her.  Fakhir, his face red, jerked away as if she was on fire and dodged around the corner.  
     “H-her n-neck,” Aria’s numb tongue tripped over itself.  “It just t-twisted.  H-he t-twisted her n-neck, her neck—”  
     The child looked over her shoulder, “Why are you hiding zura?” she frowned.  
     The words broke through Aria’s shock and panic enough for her to realize she was kneeling in the street naked.  She grabbed her soaked jacket and pulled it over herself.  “What is going on Fakhir?” she screeched.               
     His voice came from around the corner, “Are you dressed?”  
     “No, I’m not dressed!”  
     “Keep your voice down,” he hissed.  
     Trying to help, the little girl picked up Aria’s skirt and handed it to her.  
     Aria cringed away, “Fakhir!”  She snatched the garment and pulled it roughly on.  
     Fakhir peeked around the corner, saw she’d covered herself with the jacket and skirt, though the rest of her clothes still lay in a sopping pile at her feet.  “Come on,” he growled, leaning down to grab her bicep and jerk her up.  “Let’s get out of the streets.”

***

 _Nice job, idiot.  Terrorize the poor girl._    
     Fakhir growled at himself as he poured a cup of tea from the kettle on the stove and turned, placing it before a still-shivering Aria.  She clutched the blanket draped over her shoulders a little tighter.  Her hair was a tangled mess down her back, still wet from the entire pitcher of water that was dumped on her.  “Here,” he said, “drink this.”  
     Wide eyes turned up toward him in a pale face.  “Thank you,” she whispered.  
     He braced a hand on the table and leaned toward her.  “Have you calmed down now?”  
     She shuddered.  “Yes, sorry.  You just scared me.”  She picked up the cup of tea and sipped at the hot liquid.  Her eyes were fixed warily at the far end of the table where the child had firmly planted herself in a chair.  All that was visible over the table were a pair of large eyes.  
     “What is she?” Aria asked sotto voce.  
     A smile threatened on his lips.  “Kyron made her from the wood of Edel that didn’t burn up,” he explained.  A touch of sadness stained the words.  
     Understanding and sorrow chased across her face.  “From Miss Edel?”  
     He nodded.  “I named her Uzura.”  
     She blinked and looked up at him, face twisting.  “Uzura?”  
     Fakhir shrugged self-consciously.  “I found the word in a book.  It’s a type of bird that sings.”  
     “What kind of book?”  
     Instead of admitting to reading esoteric poetry, he looked away.  
     Aria frowned, squinting at Uzura as if trying to see the wood or the doll behind the flesh.  It was nearly impossible, Kyron had done an excellent job.  Like Edel, the illusion was almost perfect.  “Is that why she knew me already?  Because she was made from Miss Edel?”  
     This drew a frown from him.  _If only it were that easy._ He had hoped, once Kyron had crafted her, that Uzura would hold some of Edel’s memories.  That maybe the doll could explain what Edel had meant when she spoke to him.  But the child had no knowledge of the woman.  “No, I told her about you.”  
     Aria jerked and swung around to stare at him.  “About me?”  
     He shifted away, suddenly uncomfortable in the admission.  Was he blushing?  “I told her about you, and Mytho, and… things.”  Turning away, he picked up the kettle and repositioned it on the stove, simply to keep his hands busy.  “But it looks like Edel’s memories are gone.”  He sighed wearily, dropping his arms to his sides.  “She saved my life and became a guiding light for you and Mytho.”  _I only wish she could have given a little more guidance._  
     “She really did save our lives that night,” Aria’s voice was choked behind him.  
     He turned quickly, horrified to think she was crying.  But though her eyes were watery, there were no tears.  Fakhir cleared his throat.  
     Aria offered him a wobbly smile, “Even like this, I’m glad I get to see her again.  Now that you say it, she kind of does remind me of Edel.”  
     He caught himself smiling back at her and cleared his throat again.  “So, what are you doing here, Aria?  Was there something you wanted to tell me?”  
     Her own smile soured.  “Yes.  It has to do with Mytho.”   
     Fakhir sobered at once.   
     “The day you got suspended he… he tried to take Piqué’s heart out.”  
     He went rigid.  _What?_  
     “It didn’t work though,” she rushed on before he could speak.  “So now he’s trying to do the same thing to Freya.”  
_The heart shard of love was soaked in a bath of the raven’s blood._ Fear and rage warred for dominance in his chest.  
     Aria looked up at him with big blue eyes filled with innocence and concern.  “So, what do you think is going on with Mytho?  Did you find out anything?”  
     Fakhir blinked.  For one hard minute he considered telling her the truth about the heart shard.  _But she returned the shard of love to him.  Knowing the truth will only hurt her._ And for some inconceivable reason, Fakhir didn’t want to hurt her.  He knew he’d have to tell her eventually, but coward that he was he couldn’t do it.  Not now.  Hating himself more than a little, he averted his eyes.  “No, nothing.”  
     “Oh,” disappointment laced the word.  “Well alright.  That’s all.  I just thought that maybe you’d found out something, so I came to see if you had and—”  
     “Right,” Fakhir cut off her babbling, feeling like a jerk.  
     Aria fretted with the edges of the blanket, “I’m worried about Freya,” she admitted.  “They’re holding auditions right now, but they should be finishing soon, and something bad might happen, so I’m gonna go back.”  She dropped the blanket and stood, heading for the door.  
     “Wait,” Fakhir ordered, suddenly worried.  She paused at the threshold.  “I think I’ll go with you.”  He glanced at the child-like doll, “Uzura, I’m leaving you to housesit.”  
     The little girl grinned and beat her drum, “Leave that to me zura!”  
     Fakhir grimaced and turned back to Aria.  “Let’s go.”

***

     From where she stood in the gallery, Rue had a perfect view of the main studio below and its table of judges.  Mr. Catt sat in the center flanked by Ms. Ziegenfuss and Miss Baillieu, their cards spread before them on which they ranked each hopeful girl who danced her heart out for the chance to partner Mytho.  The prince himself stood off to one side, arms crossed as he leaned a hip against the barre and watched.  A smile quirked Rue’s lips.  _Fools, all of them._  
     Heidi had danced first as though it were her right.  The arrogant little brat chose to perform Giselle’s variation from Act I for her piece, and had grimaced and frowned her way flawlessly through it.  Rue had to stifle her own laughter at that.  Mina went next, as she was wont to do, choosing Giselle’s variation from Act II.  Rue was almost certain that they planned it that way.  Following them was almost the entire corps de ballet in an exhausting stream of solos.  Everyone was vying for Giselle.  No one tried for Myrtha.  It was clear what the _real_ first prize here was.  
     They were all pathetic.  As if Mytho would truly consent to partner any of them.  _She_ was his partner.  And after the prince ripped the heart from the winner and offered it to the raven, she would be the only one he’d ever dance with again.  
     Rue straightened as the last hopeful entered the studio, a picture of grace and serenity.  _Freya._   The girl was dressed in the costume for the Queen of the Willis, and even had a sprig of rosemary in her hand.  Unlike everyone there she had no aspirations for Rue’s spot.  Rue frowned.  It was actually one of the reasons that she had liked Freya before remembering she was Krähe.  Of all the girls in the advanced class, Freya was the nicest.   
_Which is why her heart is the perfect choice._  
     Haunting music filled the studio and Freya began to dance, her movements beautiful.  She was literally poetry in motion, the very definition of grace.  Not only was her technique perfectly on point, but her expression was fluid, poignant and evocative.  When she danced, she was the only one in the room.  
     Rue smiled as she watched, knowing it was Freya’s pure heart that made her dance so appealing.  _And the purer the heart, the more powerful it will be when I soak it in raven’s blood and offer it to Father.  With Freya’s heart to bolster his strength, he can free himself of his prison.  Then I can marry the prince and everything will be alright._  
     The music died away, Freya dropped back to fourth position, and the teachers at the judges table traded loaded stares.  
     Mr. Catt smiled, “Thank you, Miss Blumenthal, that was lovely.”  He steepled his fingers on the table.  “I noticed you marked on your card that you were auditioning for the role of Myrtha.  I’m sorry to say I won’t be casting you in that role.”  
     Freya’s head bowed, “I understand,” she murmured.  
     Mr. Catt’s smile widened, “Because you will be dancing the part of Giselle.”  
     Rue’s eyes went to Mytho.  A satisfied smile had spread over the prince’s face and he straightened from his lounging position, uncrossing his arms as he approached the girl.  “You’ll be beautiful for the showcase, Freya,” he spoke as he crossed toward her.  Catching her startled hand in his, he bent over it and placed a kiss on her knuckles.  “I cannot wait to begin practicing with you.  We’ll be spending a lot of time together in the next few days.”  
     A pretty blush spread over her cheeks as she drew her hand back.  
     Jealousy, hot and angry, roped through Rue while she watched the exchange.  _It’s an act,_ she reminded herself firmly.  _That little tramp is a means to an end, nothing more.  He’s mine.  And when this is all over, I’ll never have to share him with_ anyone _again._

***

     Aria’s pendant began buzzing as she approached the Academy with Fakhir at her side.  She closed a hand around it and drew in a sharp breath.  “We have to hurry,” she announced.  
     Fakhir caught her arm when she would have dashed over the bridge and onto the quad.  “Leave Mytho to me,” he ordered her.  “You need to save Freya.”  
     She blinked at him in surprise.  “But if we just talked to Mytho—”  
     “You need to do as I tell you,” he cut her off, face grim.  For a second, he looked as if he wanted to say more, then he shook his head and released her.  “Please.”  
     Shocked, she could only stammer, “A-alright.”  
     When they’d reached the center of the quad, Aria saw the outer door of the ballet school open.  She grabbed Fakhir’s arm and pointed, “There!”  
     Mytho walked out, leading Freya.  Together they headed for the woods.  
     Fakhir frowned, “Where is she going with him?”  
     The pendant in Aria’s hand gave a jerk and she gasped.  “The garden!”  Without waiting for Fakhir, she started to run.  
     Not completely remembering the way, Aria wove into the woods on instinct, trying to follow the path Mytho and Freya had taken.  It was Fakhir who grabbed her this time, pulling her in a different direction.  She raced to keep up with his longer stride as he cut through the trees, ignorant of any marked path.  They came upon the garden all at once, its sunburst of color appearing through the willows that sheltered it, their long green leaves whispering in the breeze as though they had secrets to share.  When Aria would have raced forward, Fakhir caught her back.  
     Mytho was standing at the head of one of the garden paths with Freya.  She had that dreamy expression on her face again as she gazed up at him.  “Love only me, Freya,” he murmured, tracing her lips, then her jaw, and neck, until his palm rested over her heart.  “Hate everybody else.”  
     “What the actual hell?” Fakhir whispered beside her.  
     “I told you!” she hissed back.  
     “Your heart is young and beautiful,” Mytho went on in that strange, smooth voice.   
_Seductive,_ Aria realized.  _He’s seducing her.  Brainwashing her somehow.  Maybe hypnosis?_  
     “…dyed black, it gives off a particularly strong fragrance.  The purer the heart, the stronger the scent.  You’ll give it to me, won’t you?”  
     Still dazed, her eyes almost glassed over, Freya nodded.  “I will.”  
     Mytho’s expression changed then, twisting, became hateful.  He threw his arms out at his sides, shadows and darkness dancing around him.  Pain sliced into Aria’s chest and she groaned.  Fakhir’s head whipped around, his mouth opened to say something.  
     “Dance Freya!” Mytho’s voice rang over the garden.  
     Only it wasn’t Mytho anymore.  The dark prince in all his ebon glamour had taken Mytho’s place.  Black wings stirred restlessly at his back, under his feet the dark altar had formed.  Fakhir’s attention returned to the garden and his face paled at what he saw.  
     “Dance as proof of your love for me and give me your heart!” the raven prince cried.  
     Obediently, Freya started to dance, and as she did the weird black flowers bloomed at her feet.  
     Fakhir didn’t hesitate.  He charged forward even as Aria cried out in warning behind him.  She followed a pace back, transforming into Tutu between one running step and the next.  She lost sight of him as the flowers formed, great dark ropes of vines covered in razor-sharp thorns that cut off her advance.  An impassable wall of deadly plants and malignant blooms barred the path.  
     “Wait!” she cried out to Freya.  The girl took no notice of her.  Unable to do anything else, Princess Tutu swirled her hands over each other in the mime for dance and held a hand out to the girl.  “Please come dance with _me._ ”  
     The raven prince glared at her, “Quit showing your face,” he snapped.  “Hurry up and vanish.”  
     Though his words tore at her heart, Tutu blinked back her tears and pushed down her own pain.  She focused on Freya.   
     “Again?” Freya turned on her, distraught.  “You tried to come between me and Mytho before.  I won’t have it!”  
     Beneath her feet crow… things took shape, their hands grasped the girl and thrust her up into the air, twisted like a sacrifice for some ancient god.  
     “Miss Freya!” Tutu cried out, trying to leap forward.  Sharp pain sliced her legs and she retreated from the thorny flowers.  She reached toward them with her power, trying to wither them, change them, _anything_.  Instead, they multiplied, pushing her further away.  
     “Yes!” Mytho exulted.  “That’s it, my little flower.  Come into my arms, Freya.”  
     Suddenly Fakhir vaulted up onto the dark altar, grabbing the raven prince roughly by the shoulders.  “Pull yourself together, Mytho!”  
     The raven prince growled, and they started to struggle against each other.  
     “Miss Freya,” Tutu begged, trying again to reach the girl.  “Is that love real?  Wasn’t _this_ your love?”  She gestured at the bright blooms Freya had cultivated, now overrun and withered beneath the terrible dark creations.  
     Freya’s eyes opened, “You’re right,” she realized.  “That _is_ what I desired.  Now look around, see how many lovely flowers have bloomed.”  
     Tutu stretched into an arabesque, reaching out over the deadly vines.  “No Freya,” she intoned.  “Look around.  Is this really what you wanted them to look like?”  Her voice broke.  “Are these the flowers that you loved?”  
     Her head came up and the girl looked around.  Her eyes unglazed and she frowned, even as the crow… things bore her toward the dark altar and the raven prince.  “My beautiful flowers.  Where are they?”  
     On the altar, Fakhir gained the upper hand on the raven prince and grasped him by the jaw, jerking his head around to behold the faery princess at the edge of the evil garden.  “Watch!” he demanded.  
     “I can’t see them!” Freya panicked, “I can’t see my flowers!”  
     Before Tutu’s feet, the malignant blossoms began to retreat.  Tutu bourreed forward, arms winging gracefully at her sides.  “Don’t give up,” she sang out, “Remember your prayer.”  
     “My prayer?”  
     “Yes, your prayer for the flowers to grow.  For beauty.”  Tutu twirled forward again as the dark blossoms retreated further.  “That was what you wished for, wasn’t it Miss Freya?  This isn’t true beauty,” she extended a sweeping hand over the malignant vines, “the true beauty is what you cultivated with your patience and love.”  
     Freya’s face lightened.  “You’re right!”  Suddenly, the dark flowers burst into so many shadows, and the garden was a rainbow of color again.  The crow… things that held Freya aloft melted away, and the girl collapsed into Tutu’s outstretched arms.  
     The form of the raven prince faded too, and in his place Mytho stood.  Fakhir shook him, “Mytho, remember!”  
     The prince tossed him aside, face twisted up into agony.  “Why won’t you love me!” he shouted at the unconscious Freya.  “Why?”  All at once he surged forward as if to pounce on the girl in Tutu’s arms, but Fakhir caught him back.  
     “Mytho!” he shouted in his friend’s face, “remember your real self!”  
     The hate and rage in Mytho’s eyes shattered and he staggered in place.  “…my real self?”  
     Shadows swept through the air and Tutu laid Freya down to stand over her protectively as Krähe appeared.  The crow princess landed at Mytho’s back and wrapped her arms around him.  She propped her chin on his shoulder.  “Don’t let your ears be poisoned by some knight too selfish to die.”  
     “Point of fact,” Tutu growled through clenched teeth, “he almost _did_ die, thanks to you.”  
     Krähe just smirked and stroked the prince’s cheek.  “The way you are now is the real Mytho.”  
     Tutu’s temper flared.  “Krähe, what have you done to Mytho?” she demanded, rushing forward.  She had a mind to wrap her hands around the crow witch’s neck and wring answers from her.  An iron band around her waist ceased her advance as Fakhir ceased her in her charge.  
     Krähe laughed.  “The one who made the prince like this is you, Tutu.”  
     Fakhir’s arms tightened on her.   
     “What?” she gasped.  
     “Stop it!” Fakhir demanded.  
     Krähe’s smug expression grew triumphant.  “After all, you returned the feeling of love to the prince.”  
     Tutu’s face went white.  “What?” this time her voice was a dry husk of itself.  
     Krähe grinned, “…Ignorant of the fact that it was dyed in the raven’s blood.”  
     All the strength seemed to sap from her limbs, and if Fakhir wasn’t holding her up, Tutu would have collapsed.  “What?”  
     Krähe’s eyes tracked to Fakhir and she winked.  “You didn’t tell her, did you Fakhir?”  
     Something flickered to life inside her and she twisted to see the guilt on his face.  She stiffened and pushed away from him.  “Fakhir?”  
     Throwing her head back, Krähe cackled.  At a wave of her hand a murder of crows descended from the sky.  Fakhir grabbed her again, and spun her away as the crows descended, keeping their sharp claws from her with his own body.  
     “I’m forever in your debt, Tutu!” Krähe continued to cackle as she bore the prince away.  
     The crows disappeared with her.  As soon as they were gone, Tutu shoved away from the arms that held her.  
     “Aria—” he broke off, his face agonized.  
     But she didn’t care.  Falling to her knees, Tutu wrapped her arms around herself and wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uzura are a type of Old World quail (Cortunix japonica) previously thought to be a subspecies of common quail, which are native to Russia and East Asia and overwinter in Japan. They were domesticated in the 11th century as song birds. Quail singing contests were a popular pastime in the Heian Court, and in the Meiji period uzura were bred for egg-laying. Populations were decimated in World War II as the uzura were consumed for food. The songbird breeds of uzura were butchered to extinction during this time, while some egg-laying varieties survive to today. In Heian literature, uzura are associated with autumn and have a tragic connotation, often symbolized with abandoned houses and unrequited love.


	7. Nachmittag eines Fauns

_**Afternoon of a Faun** _

 

     Flashes of darkness.  Floods of feathers.  Block, parry, strike!  Turn and repeat.  Endless demons falling from the sky.  He couldn’t see beyond the black bodies that met their end on his blade.  There was no blue sky beyond them, no breath between them.  His arms ached, his lungs hurt, and still he fought.  At his back fought another, cutting down the ceaseless tide of destruction with his own gory blade.  At their feet the green grass was red with blood, the soil turned to mud beneath their boots with it.  And still the attack went on.  
     He was dimly aware that they weren’t alone on the field of battle anymore.  Though the palace guard may have fallen, others had risen up in their stead.  _Cadets,_ he realized, seeing a flash of a uniform through the midnight feathers.  
     Mytho blinked.  
_I’m back?_  
     It was the dream.  The one from before.  It felt so real and he didn’t know—couldn’t know—if memory, fantasy, or fear fueled it.  
     A break in the fighting showed a full view of the quad that wasn’t the quad and he saw the gatehouse at the far end, saw his knight standing alone with his back to the wards cutting the hateful creatures from the sky with the grace of a dancer on a stage.  And in the body-riddled battlefield between them, he saw the cadets—practically children—and the women’s homeguard fighting and falling beneath the demon crows’ talons.  
_So much death._ It broke his heart and fueled his rage.  So much innocence bleeding out and all for what?  For pride?  For power?  For one hate-filled being to win the prize of a broken world?  He saw other bodies in his mind.  A different place.  A different battlefield.  A different war.  _But wait… not different_.  The same war on a different front.  The same enemy by a different name.  The same evil, always the same.  
     “Sire, there are too many.”  The ragged, weary voice of his soldier snapped him back to the moment.  
     Mytho knew he was right.  He could barely lift his sword again to strike.  _How long have we been fighting?_ He couldn’t remember.  _It wasn’t supposed to end here, was it?_ Though what difference would it make if it ended here or on the grisly checkerboard.  
     He blinked again.  _Wait… what?_  
     Broken memories refused to form.  
     A girl to his left, her face covered in blood that wasn’t her own, caught his attention with a shout.  “We’ll cover you sire!” she cried.  “Get to the wards!”  
_No._  
     He couldn’t run while his people fought.  He couldn’t live while his people died.  It wasn’t right.  He wasn’t made to accept those costs.  He may not know much, but he knew that.  
     “She’s right,” his soldier hissed through gritted teeth, even as he fought.  “You’re the last of the bloodline.  Without you sire, our people fail.”  
     Mytho’s eyes swept the bloody quad, then turned to the black-winged sky.  _We’ve already failed._  
     A different day flashed in his head again.  A different time.  _Can you remember things in dreams?_ he wondered.  Yet he saw it in his mind’s eye:  an undying king who lay dying, a promise extracted on his final breath.  _And a vow made in death is binding forever._  
     “No,” Mytho ground out.  He wouldn’t abandon these brave people on this battlefield of death.  He would stand with them.  He would die with them.  His people wouldn’t fail.  They still had _her._  
     The lull in the battle ended and the birds closed in.  Aching arms were lifted to deliver death once again.  On and on it went until the grass was gone and the mud was red, and broken black-winged bodies lay in droves amongst the broken bodies of his people.  Mytho raised his arms one last time—he knew it was the last because he hadn’t the strength to raise his arms again.  He struck a bird from the sky and his sword slipped free.  At his back, his soldier slid in the mud and fell to his knees.  Across the quad, his knight roared in frustration—a final cry against death and defeat.  He closed his eyes, welcoming the end.  _At least she’s safe._  
     Around him, the air shivered with power.  The death he waited didn’t come.  An invisible hook in his gut jerked and his eyes flew open.  Mytho watched in horror while the birds in the sky wheeled around, winging toward the gatehouse where a great surge of _power_ was building.  “No,” he gasped, knowing without knowing how what the source of that power was.  He struggled forward two steps before his legs gave out.  
     The waif of a girl stepped out of the gatehouse.  No armor protected her flesh from the birds, no weapon she held to keep them at bay.  Her eyes swept the battlefield, calculated up the weight of death, and balanced it in the scales of the gods with a single look.  Then she turned those burning eyes on the sky and raised her hands.  
     “No!” Mytho cried out, even as the crows in a single concerted movement, dove for the girl.  
_Power_ ripped through the air, and behind the girl, beyond the gatehouse, the _entire river_  lifted from its bed.  She raised her arms and the river rose higher, a ribbon of flowing water that rose up, up, up… to the height of the broken dome which protected the town.  With a scream that shattered the air and pierced his soul, she released her power and the river.  Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water fell in a sheet from the sky, bearing the broken bodies of the raven’s army to earth.  
     Silence settled over the town, and across the field of gore, Mytho met the girl’s eyes.  He saw it then, saw the thing he feared.  He wasn’t the last hope of his people.  _She_ was.

 

     Mytho woke with a jerk to an immediate stab of pain which sliced into his chest, piercing his heart and stealing his breath.   
     “ _Remember your real self!”_  
     Fakhir’s words echoed in his mind and he blinked.  _Is that what that is?  Are these dreams real?_ But how could they be?  Pain uncoiled through his body, spreading into his limbs as he struggled to recall the things his unconscious mind had seen.  The images slipped away, like water running through his open fingers.  They refused to coalesce.  He opened his eyes and looked around.  _My room?  How did I get here?_  
     He remembered the garden.  Remembered the girl.  Remembered the exultant voice in his mind that demanded he reach into her breast and rip out her heart.  
     “No,” Mytho gasped, clutching at his chest as he rolled, curling into a ball while the pain spiked through him.  “I won’t let you turn me into a monster.”  
_“You’re already a monster, dear prince,”_ the dark voice in his mind purred softly.  _“Only a monster would leave his people defenseless to the raven by shattering his heart.”_  
     “You’re twisting it up,” he moaned.  “I did that to save them.”  
_“You failed.”_  
     More pain.  It burned through him like black fire, but he refused to give in.  “Why are you doing this?”  
     The sound of laughter filled his mind.  _“For the oldest reason in the book, my prince.”_  
     Pain exploded into his skull and Mytho cried out, clutching his head with both hands.  “I won’t let you win!”  The words came out choked.  
_“Soon,”_ the dark voice promised, _“you won’t have a choice.”_

***

     “Have you forgiven me yet?” Fakhir asked.  
     Instead of answering, Aria harrumphed and kept walking.  She had forgiven him… kind of.  Him carrying Freya to the school’s infirmary for her had bought a large portion of favor.  It had taken her over an hour the other night to haul Piqué’s dead weight back to her dorm room.  And he didn’t say anything about her puffy eyes or red cheeks—Aria was an ugly crier—so that bought him a little more.  And the past quarter hour of silence as they walked back toward the smithy had earned him a smidgen more of her grace.  She still wasn’t happy with him, though.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
     He huffed unhappily and ran a hand through his hair.  “Because I’m a jerk,” he murmured.  The words were clearly meant for him alone.  
     “You are a jerk,” she muttered back, earning her a surprised bark of laughter.  A small smile curved her lips only to wither a moment later.  “I still would have rather heard that from you than Krähe.”  
     “I know,” he sighed.  “I’m sorry, Aria.”  
     She froze and faced him, heart clutching in her chest.  She could count on one hand the number of times Fakhir had apologized to her, and not once had he sounded so contrite.  “Fakhir…” she broke off, chewing her lip nervously.  “Mytho _is_ Mytho, right?” Her words sounded small and scared.  
     An expression flitted across Fakhir’s face too fast to identify.  
     “Even with raven’s blood,” she rushed on, “Mytho is Mytho.  He’ll go back to his old self.”  She blinked up at him, “Right?”  
     He caught his breath and was silent for a long moment.  “Of course.”  
     His words buoyed her lagging spirits, even if a small part of her suspected he was simply trying to placate her.  But Fakhir had to believe it too.  They weren’t giving up on Mytho.  Never that.  “What should we do now?” she asked.  _How can we save him?_  
     “I don’t know,” he admitted, sounding frustrated.  “This isn’t anything I was trained to fight.”  
     Her eyebrows soared up, “Trained?”  She remembered all the swords and armor she’d seen in the smithy when she was a duck, “By Kyron?”  
     Pink tinged his cheeks and he glanced away, resuming the trek toward the smithy.  “At any rate, this isn’t the kind of problem that can be solved with… my sort of skills.”  He sounded disappointed in himself for that.   
     Aria put a hand on his arm, “Hey, you were the one who got through to him back there,” she reminded him, “Not Tutu.”  
     Fakhir shrugged uncomfortably.  “It was both of us.  And it was only for an instant.”  
_Then Krähe showed up._  
     “She’s the raven’s daughter,” he told her softly.  “She told me that when she…”  
     Aria grimaced.  _When she told Fakhir that she soaked the heart shard of love in the raven’s blood._ “What can we do?” she whispered again.  
     “Until now I’ve been looking for any kind of reference to the prince or the raven in stories.”  
     Again, she was surprised, “Any stories?”  That seemed unlikely.  
     “The strange thing is, I’ve found traces in every book I’ve picked up, as if all of the stories link together somehow.”  Frustration filled his voice.  “There’s a pattern, and I just can’t see how it fits together, or what I’m supposed to do with it.”  
     Aria was quiet for several blocks.  “Can I help?” she asked at last as they were nearing the edge of town.  
     He cast her a look.  “Can you read?”  
_Was he teasing her?_ Yes, she decided from the faint smirk on his face, he was.  Rather than answering, she elbowed him.  
     Fakhir’s face lightened into a relieved smile.  
     “I’m serious.”  
     He shrugged, “I don’t know.  So far, I’ve been going on instinct, picking up whatever book struck me.  Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m looking for.  I only hope I’ll know it when I find it.”  
     “Hmm…”  
     On the corner of Mitgefühlgasse, Fakhir paused.  “You should keep searching for the missing pieces of Mytho’s heart.  Maybe with his heart whole he can fight the raven’s blood.”  
     Aria unconsciously closed her hand around the pendant.  “Maybe.”  She only hoped he was right.

***

     Rue ducked and covered her arms with her head to ward off the raven’s powerful wings, even though she knew he couldn’t reach where she stood from his perch.  Still, his temper frightened her.  “Calm down, father!” she pleaded.  “If you get excited, it will affect your health!”  
     The  raven’s wings continued to flap against the cloudless night, the light of a thousand stars swallowed up in his inky feathers.  “You still don’t have the heart!” he croaked back angrily.  “What of the young and beautiful heart for me?”  
     Rue wavered in place, tears threatening.  “You see, Princess Tutu interferes every time—”  
     “Don’t give me excuses!” the great bird roared, his gravelly voice thundering off the foundations of the ruin.  
     Rue quailed before him.  “But father!  When he sees Princess Tutu, the old prince starts to awaken again. So…”  The great bird’s head lowered, fixing her in a steely, ruby-eyed glare that cut her to the quick and dried up the words on her tongue.  
     “If you’re a girl of noble raven birth, cease this incessant whining!”  
     The tears stinging her eyes started to fall, and she swiped them angrily away.  
     “Hurry and fetch me a heart!”  
     “I understand,” she acquiesced on a sob.  She reached one shaking hand toward him.  “Please calm yourself, father.”  The raven’s deep growl made her quickly withdraw her hand, and she whimpered.  “Poor father.”

***

     On Saturday morning, while it seemed the whole school was at the Academy preparing for the summer showcase that was only a week away now—including Piqué and Lillie who’d both made the _corps de blanc_ for the dance division’s presentation of Giselle, Aria braved her own inhibitions to wander into the campus library.  _I know Fakhir said I should try to find the pieces of the prince’s heart, but I can help with this too._ She eyed the endless stacks of books.  _Probably._  
     Picking a direction at random, she began wandering into the warrens of the library, trying to convince herself that the tang of iron in the air and the susurrus of countless feathers was all a figment of her overactive imagination.  Along with the prickly feeling of crawling things down her spine.  Honestly, she had no idea why this building gave her the heebie jeebies, but it did.  
     Rubbing her hands briskly up and down her arms as if to ward off invisible chills, she hurried her steps.  _I wonder where I should look,_ she mused, knowing there was a system but having no idea how to  decipher it.  _Fakhir said he just picked books that struck him._ Her eyes scanned over the imposing spines of leather-bound editions with gilt print.  None of them looked remotely appealing.  _How does he know where to start?_  
     She turned a corner, noting in passing that she’d somehow ended up in a historical reference section, and noted a sign on a shelf reading TH-U in big block letters that were easy for her to read.  The books on this row seemed to hold a bit more promise.  Many of them had pictures on their spines in addition to words.  One big black volume that looked like it weighed more than her had a silver swan stamped on its spine, the worn title barely discernible against the leather.  The swan seemed to flicker in the hazy light drifting in through the high windows, and despite the fact that it was shelved well over her head, she reached up on her tiptoes to stroke a finger across its rough surface.  
     Frowning, she reached further and brushed the aged leather with her fingertips, shifting the tome a millimeter or two off the shelf.  A shower of dust rained down for her efforts, coating her upturned face and causing her to sneeze.  The force of her sneeze propelled her forward and her outstretched hand struck the book she was reaching for.  It tumbled off the shelf and bounced off her head on the way down.  Aria reeled against the bookshelf and fell off her feet while the world spun out into a black void.

     Aria woke up to the sound of rain pattering against the leaded window at the end of the row of shelves.  She groaned and sat up, clutching her aching head with one hand.  “How long was I out?” she wondered aloud.  
     “About three minutes,” a male voice informed her clinically.  
     She startled and craned around to see who had spoken, earning a throbbing pain in her head for her effort.  
     A tall boy with glasses was standing behind her, thumbing through the shelves with nonchalance.  He glanced in her direction, “If it’s of any comfort, no one saw you but me.”  
     “Great,” she grumbled.  
     He abandoned his search and squatted down beside her, picking up the book she had dropped.  He squinted at its title, “Do you read Latin?”  
     “Not really,” she muttered, glaring at the unoffending book.  
     “Strange that you’d pick this one then.  It’s written in Latin.”  
     “Really?” she exclaimed, snatching it out of the boy’s hand and flipping it open on her lap.  Sure enough, the strange language stared her right in the face.  “Great,” she groaned, “I knocked myself out for nothing.”  
     “Maybe not nothing,” the boy shrugged.  “I can translate for you, if you know what you’re looking for.”  
     She glanced at him speculatively, “You speak Latin?”  
     “I manage,” he answered noncommittally.  “You’re in Professor Gottschalk’s Greek Philosophy class, right?”  
     Aria blinked at him.  _No._ “Yes?”  
     He indicated the book, “He’s done his neoplatonism lecture then, I take it.”  
_Neoplatonism?_  She blushed, glancing at the book.  “Yeah, I thought it was interesting so I—”  
     “Come on then,” he stood abruptly, taking the book back and walking off up the row of shelves.  
     “Hey!” she exclaimed in surprised indignation.  She jumped to her feet and had to brace herself against the shelf for a second or two until the world stopped spinning.  “Give that back!”  
     He glared at her over his shoulder, “Shush,” he admonished, “this is a library.  People are studying.”  
     Aria had caught up to him now, “Oh,” she blushed again and looked around.  “Sorry.”  
     “You want to know about this, don’t you?” the boy asked her gruffly, holding up the heavy tome in one hand, which she considered quite the feat given its size.  He’d reached one of the tables that rested at the end of the rows and pulled out a chair indicating that she should sit.  “So, let’s look at it.”  
     “Um—” she looked up at him uncertainly.  “I don’t think I’ve seen you around school…”  
     “I’m in the music program,” he answered shortly, “You’re in the dance program.  We don’t have any classes together.  I’ve seen you in here though.  With Fakhir.”  
     “Oh!” she exclaimed, realizing that’s who he reminded her of.  
     He sighed wearily and waved at the chair, “Just sit, will you?”  
_Yeah, he definitely reminds me of Fakhir._   Aria bit back a sharp retort and instead acquiesced to sit in the chair.  The boy sat down beside her and opened the book, positioning it for both of them to see, though it did her little good since she couldn’t understand it at all.  “So, what does it say?” she asked, leaning closer over the enigmatic pages.  
     “Hmph,” he responded.  “It’s just a philosophy text.  Looks like it was misfiled too, I don’t think it belongs in that section.”  
     “So it’s not about…” her face scrunched up as she tried to remember the word he’d used, “Neoplatonism?”  
     “Only vaguely.  It talks about some of the same drivel Gottschalk babbles on about but doesn’t seem to be all that closely related.  It mentions henosis, spiritual perfection…”  He flipped a page, clicking his tongue impatiently.  
     “Hey!  You can’t have read everything already?”  
     “I don’t need to read everything,” he answered superiorly, “I can just look at it to know what it says.”  
_Huh,_ she examined his face suspiciously.  “What are you, some kind of genius or something?”  
     “Yes.”  
     Her eyebrows went up.  _So, I guess that explains his bad people skills._   She glanced back at the book.  He’d flipped several pages now.  “Hey!” she exclaimed again, “you didn’t translate those!”  
     “Yes, I did,” he told her in irritation.  “It’s nothing special or interesting.  It’s sort of like a guidebook and philosophy and history all rolled into one.  It’s pretty poorly composed, actually.  The author could have at least broken it out into sections.  Unless he was trying to write in some kind of code, which would just be stupid for a philosophy text, and entirely counterproductive.”  He scoffed at his last statement as if that was beyond the poor dead author’s mental capacity to grasp.  
     It was Aria’s turn to “Hmph!”  
     He flipped another page, came upon an illustration, and paused, “Well this is interesting,” he murmured.  
     Aria leaned closer, “What is it?”  
     “Do you mind?” he complained, “you’re blocking the light.”  
     Irritated, she leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest to keep herself from slapping him.  The illustration which had caught her eye seemed to come alive off the page.  It showed what looked like a sorcerer summoning some sort of dark winged creature out of fire.  “So what does it say?” she asked impatiently.  
     “It talks about _goetia,_ ” he translated.  “Some sort of opposing force to theurgy.  Instead of calling on the divine, it summons the infernal to work magical wonders.  You’d call it sorcery.”  The way he said that didn’t make it sound like a compliment.   
     Knowing she’d probably regret it, Aria asked.  “What is theurgy?”  
     He gave her an arch look, “You are _in_ Professor Gottschalk’s class, right?”  
     Aria chose not to answer.  
     “This is ridiculous,” he harrumphed, “This book is combining too many things.  It has mentions of theurgy, druidism, goetia… it’s like a hodgepodge of the barely paranormal.”  He huffed and pushed it away, “It’s absolutely useless.”  
     Aria snagged a corner of the book and pulled it toward her, flipping another page to come across a second illustration.  This one showed what looked like some kind of ancient soldier kneeling before a white-winged creature. The illustration called to her in a way she couldn’t quite explain.  
     “Hmm,” the boy hummed, sounding curious.  “I’ve never seen this before…”  
     Resisting the urge to crowd him again, Aria persisted.  “Seen what?”  
     “It’s some kind of old myth I’ve never heard of.”  He read it and then blinked.  “It talks of this,” he pointed at the swan creature, “an ancient force the Romans would have called Fortuna, but later interpretations translated it as an angel.”  He flipped the page again and made a sound of irritation, “Now it’s talking about grail literature.  This is a waste of time.”  
     “Grail literature?”  
     “You know, King Arthur and the knights of the round table.”  
     She frowned, “What does that have to do with anything?”  
     “Nothing.  That’s why it’s a waste of time.  Right here,” he pointed to a line, “It mentions Arthur and the Fisher King in the same sentence, even though in every other mention of them in grail literature they’re two different people.  Then here,” he pointed to another spot on the page further down, “It talks about an ‘Undying King’ as if it’s the same entity.”  His hand moved further down, “And here it mentions a grail, but here it’s a shield, and here it’s a sword.”  His finger froze on the page and his face paled.  
     “What is it?” Aria leaned closer as if she had any chance of deciphering the ancient language.  
     He straightened his glasses and cleared his throat.  “Excuse me,” he said abruptly, pushing his chair back and rising to his feet.  “I just remembered there’s something I need to take care of.”  
     “What?” Aria gazed at him bewildered.  But before she could react, he’d taken off with the book under his arm.  “Hey, wait!” she called out, no longer trying to be quiet.  Several students and a librarian shushed her, but she carried on, running noisily after the swiftly retreating bespectacled boy despite the growing pounding in her head.  She rounded a corner and stared down an empty hallway confounded.  _Where did he go?_

 

     Monday morning came all too swiftly for Aria.  Thanks to her adventure in the library, she’d had a splitting headache all weekend, and had one more reason now to avoid that place.  Feeling grumpy and irritable, she walked to school with Piqué and Lillie at the unfortunate crack of dawn, clutching her books to her chest and trying to tune out their excited babble.  
     Gossip spread through the Academy during the showcase preparations all weekend, fueled by the happenings on Thursday and Friday.  Word had spread about Piqué and Mytho’s brief little tryst, and that coupled with Rue’s apparent injury and Freya’s casting as Giselle on Friday led vicious rumors to be spread that Mytho caused Rue’s injury so he could be rid of her.  According to the gossipmongers, he was swiftly becoming an unrepentant rake, preying upon any of the girls in the dance program he could get to.   
     The more vicious of the rumormongers bandied the idea that Fakhir shoved Mytho out of the window in a jealous rage, then as the scorned lover had attacked Rue in the quad, and now Freya and even Piqué were prime targets whenever he returned from suspension.  Much as Aria tried to block the hateful words out, she wasn’t immune to them.  Curiously enough, there was absolutely no mention of her amongst the drama.  Unfortunately, it was all Piqué and Lillie could talk about.  
     “Seriously, is he trying to sleep his way through the dance school?” Piqué muttered disgruntledly of Mytho.  
     “Did he sleep with you?” Lillie squeaked in surprise.  
     Piqué’s cheeks reddened, “Of course not, I’m just saying that he’s acting really weird.”  She turned to Aria.  “Are you still into him, Duck?  Because I’ve asked around and most of the girls in class think he’s creepy now.”  
     “How can she be?” Lillie scoffed without Aria offering any input.  “Especially with the way he’s acting.  He’s just not mysterious anymore.  I thought the thing with Annette was just a fluke, but now it’s a pattern.  And no girl wants to be a notch on some boy’s bedpost,” she bumped Aria’s shoulder with hers, “Right Duck?”  
     “Right,” Aria muttered grouchily, not really listening.  _He is acting weird, but that’s because he’s not the real Mytho._ A pang pierced her heart on the wings of a new realization, _and he’s got to be the one who’s suffering the most._ She sighed morosely.  _I want to return him to the old Mytho as soon as I can.  But how do I do that?_  
     “Look alive, ladies,” Piqué muttered irritably, “we’ve got company coming.”  
     “Huh?” Aria dredged her mind out of her dark thoughts and focused on the moment.  They’d reached the swan fountain and striding swiftly toward them from the direction of Noverre Hall was none other than Aria’s least favorite dance partner, Eufemio.  “Oh!” her cheeks flamed at the sight of his determined expression, and she realized suddenly that she’d never given him an answer to his question.  From the look on his face, he was done waiting.  
     “Bonjour mademoiselles,” he bowed when he reached them, though his eyes were fixed solely on Aria.  “You look lovely as ever today.”  
     Piqué made a noise in her throat somewhere between a snort and a laugh.  Lille covered her mouth with her hand and seemed to be holding back gales of hilarity  
     “Aria, I’d hoped to have a few words with you before warmups.”  
     “Sure, we’ll go on ahead to the locker room, Duck,” Lillie chimed up.  
     Aria grabbed her sleeve and held on, “That’s not necessary, I really should get going.  I’m only just off probation you know.”  
     Eufemio’s brow knit, “But—”  
     “Don’t worry, Duck,” Piqué promised, a laughing look in her eyes as she pried Aria’s fingers off Lillie’s sleeve, “We’ve got ages yet before class starts.”  
     Aria shot her a hot glare.  “With friends like you, who needs enemies?” she hissed under her breath.  
     Piqué laughed aloud, linking her arm through Lillie’s and hauling the other girl away.  “Have fun!”  
     Bereft of her safety net, Aria turned back toward Eufemio.  “So…” she fidgeted nervously, “What did you want to say?”  
     “First—” he reached into his blazer and withdrew a single red rose, “I wanted to give you this.”  
     Aria’s already flaming cheeks burned hotter.  They weren’t alone out here.  _Everyone_ could see them, and several students were staring openly with amused and curious expressions on their faces.  
     “O-okay,” she stammered, accepting the rose when he gave her no other choice.  
     “Though this little trifle could never hold a candle to the greatness of your love.”  
     She cringed.   _Egads, did he really just say that?_         
     “Sweet Aria of the truth-filled eyes, I do desire to once again lay my heart bare for you in hopes you’ll take pity on this poor pathetic soul.  For I would pledge you my troth if you but said the word.”  He grasped her hand in his and leaned down, brushing a kiss across her knuckles.  
     “Uh—” she panicked, “I think I left my tights on the fire, I better go check them before the muffins burn!”  Turning on her heels, she ran, leaving behind a trail of laughter and jeers in her wake.

***

     “What are you playing at?” Rue demanded, confronting Mytho in the sheltered space under the mezzanine at the ballet school’s backdoor.  
     The prince, having just arrived for class, arched a brow at her.  “What do you mean?”  
     Angry, Rue shoved at him.  “You know what I mean!” she hissed.  “Twice now, you’ve failed, and you’ve made me the laughingstock of the school.  Do you know what everyone is saying about us?”  
     A twisted smile spread over his face and he reached out, grasping a tendril of her hair and twirling it between his fingers.  “I didn’t think you cared about those gossipmongers, Krähe.”  
     Cold chills speared her, and she jerked her head away.  “Don’t call me that here.”   
     “Of course,” he murmured, “whatever you wish.”  
     More chills.  She peered deeply into his eyes and saw the shadows swirling there.  Something about those shadows scared her.  This wasn’t the Mytho she’d fallen in love with.  For one heart-splitting second, it was like she was looking at a stranger.  _No!_ she told herself fiercely.  _He’s mine._   “It would be cruel to Father if we don’t get a sacrificial heart for him to eat soon,” she reminded him softly, looking for a trace of the compassion she’d seen in his eyes once before.  
     “I know,” he murmured back.  
     Rue shivered.  “He’s never been very patient, you know.  I’m sick of waiting as well,” she whispered the last words under her breath.  She yearned to have Mytho comfort her, but the empty shell he’d been before had no comfort to offer, and this _thing_ she’d turned him into—she wasn’t sure she wanted _his_ comfort.  All at once the hair on the back of her neck prickled and she spun around.  “Who’s there?” she called out.  
     Hesitantly, a figure appeared around the corner.  
     Rue’s eyes widened, “Tu—” she broke off, casting a look at Mytho.  _He doesn’t know who she really is.  If he did, would he choose her?_ She swallowed back the taste of bile at the thought.  “Hello Duck,” she crooned instead.  She gave the prince a dismissive glance, “You can go, Mytho.”  
     He cast an odd look her direction, then glanced at Duck.  Something on his face changed.  The shadows lightened, and Rue’s heart turned over heavily in her chest.  “I should—” he started.  
     “Go on,” she barked shortly, “get going.”  
     After another moment he shrugged, “Alright.”  Turning, he disappeared into the school.  
     Rue pivoted to face Duck.   
     “Mytho, wait!” she cried out.  
     “Forget it,” Rue snapped.  
     Duck froze, her eyes wide.  Her flyaway curls frizzed out into a haphazard halo around her head and Rue sneered.  _Fakhir was right, she really is an eyesore._  
     “But Rue, I—”  
     Anger surged through her, “I already told you, there is no Rue.”  
     Stubborn determination shone in the girl’s eyes.  “That’s not true.  I don’t believe that.”   
     Rue blinked.  For a moment she’d almost sounded… _commanding._  
     Tentatively, the girl offered her a small smile, toying with her necklace as she did.  “I get this feeling you’re still Rue.”  
     Dark fire flashed in her mind.  A scene in her head playing out—four girls in a room trying on clothes… _laughter, teasing, happiness_.  Rue blinked, a startled laugh escaping her lips.  _A dream,_ she scoffed at her own imagination.  _A wishful fantasy._ “It honestly doesn’t matter what it is you think,” she sniffed.  “It’s done now, and the prince is mine.”  
     Aria opened her mouth to protest but was cut off when a panting boy almost barged into her in his haste to reach the school.  
     Rue’s brows went up.  
     “There you are,” the boy gasped, clutching a stitch in his side.  “Give me your hand, s’il vous plait!”  
     Duck flinched away from the boy, flattening herself against the wall.  
     “You don’t have to be so shy, my cute one,” he went on, completely impervious to the lack of interest in his wooing.  “You bloom like a flower, you fly away like a songbird.  Oh, lovely you!”  
     Rue’s eyebrows soared higher, and an amused grin stretched her lips.  “What do we have here?” she asked, propping her hands on her hips, highly entertained.  
     The boy froze in the very act of bowing to Duck.  He turned to face her, and his eyes widened.  “Mademoiselle,” he murmured in awe, “forgive me for only just now noticing your fervent gaze.”  
     Duck made a small squeak as the boy’s attention diverted from her, and darted quickly away, disappearing around the corner of the school.  
     Rue laughed aloud, “My, you are a smooth devil, aren’t you?”  At the back of her mind an idea began to form.  _The prince doesn’t_ have _to be the one to acquire a heart for father._ I _could take one!_  
     She sidled toward him, swaying her hips seductively.  “Young love is always such a fervent, fleeting thing, isn’t it?” she crooned.  She brushed her fingertips over his collar, “How long have you pined for poor, pathetic Duck?”  
     He cleared his throat, wide eyes fixed on her face.  “Who’s Duck?”  
     Rue laughed again.  “Are you in love with her?”  
     A smile slid across his lips, “I love everyone.  Such is my wish to love the whole world and be loved by the whole world.  That is why I dance.  It is why you dance too, is it not?”  
     “Of course,” she shrugged, “But that’s not the kind of love I meant.”  
     His smile shifted into something hotter.  “It would be the greatest triumph of all to win the love of a beautiful woman, I should think.”  
     “And to love her in return,” Rue whispered in his ear.  
     “Of course.  It is only a matter of time before Aria—”  
     Rue blinked.   _No one but the prince in the story can truly love a pitiful person like you…_  
     “My, you are a confident one, aren’t you?” she cut him off.  “That pride… it’s enough to make me hate you.”  She stepped away from him and offered a bitter smile.  “You’re really something wonderful.”

***

     “Man, I wish I’d stayed to see that,” Piqué giggled.  
     Aria growled at her, “I wish you’d stayed too… turncoat!”  
     Ms. Ziegenfuss threw them both a withering glare where she stood on the wall beside the gathered class.   
     Lillie hushed them both before they could get in any more trouble.  
     The class was divided today for the first wave of the summer session’s final examinations.  On one wall, the junior students were lined up sitting under the barre, and across the room the senior students sat, Rue in their midst in her red ballet dress with Mytho at her side.  Aria noticed that Rue’s ankle was still bound, her pretense of injury still firmly in place.  Her eyes went to Freya then, sitting between Mina and Heidi.  The girl didn’t look any worse for her confrontation with the raven prince.  That at least was a relief.  
     “Now today,” Mr. Catt continued to drone on in the center of the floor as he paced between the classes.  “We will be testing your abilities.”  He cast a look in Rue’s direction, giving her a short nod as if to indicate she was off the hook for the test in deference to her pseudo-injury.  “There is, however, no need to be nervous.  If you have not neglected your everyday practicing, you should have no problem.”  
     Aria wasn’t really listening, she was gazing across the floor at Mytho where he sat placidly beside Rue.  _At times like this it seems like nothing’s changed but… Mytho._  
     “First up,” Mr. Catt announced, will be Mr. Fü—”  
     The doors to the studio burst open, necks snapped around as every head in the room turned to see who dared to interrupt Mr. Catt’s speech.  
     “Oh, bloody pointe shoes,” Aria swore under her breath.  
     Piqué’s hand clamped onto her arm on one side, Lillie’s on the other.  
     “Has he lost his mind?” Lillie hissed.  
     Eufemio stood at the front of the studio, and he had… apparently painted himself up as the faun of Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun.  “Mr. Catt!” he declaimed in a loud voice that rang off the hardwood.  He offered an ostentatious bow before going on, “Pardon me, but I would like to dance my solo first.”  
     “Mr. Belmonte!”  Mr. Catt bellowed, “You are on probation!”  
     Eufemio seemed to take no notice of their instructor’s ire, or the derisive reaction he was eliciting from his fellow classmates.  Rather, his attention was riveted on Aria.  
     “Please kill me,” Aria groaned.  
     “Contact with true art is an enriching experience for everyone!” Eufemio announced boldly.  
     Piqué leaned closer to Aria, “I think your rejection caused him to go off the deep end.”  
     “He’s definitely lost it,” Lillie agreed.  
     “It’s like a train wreck,” Piqué went on.   
     “He’s got guts for being on probation,” Aria muttered, her headache resuming with pounding force.  
     “He can’t really believe he’s that good, can he?”  
     Aria sighed miserably, “Yeah, he can.”  
     “Oh, this is going to be good!” Lillie gushed, clapping her hands together in near-silent applause.  
     Striding forward, Eufemio practically forced Mr. Catt off the floor, and to everyone’s horror began dancing a third-rate imitation of Nijinsky’s choreography.  
_“He does know this is a classical ballet school, right?”_ someone whispered.  
_“Oh gads, please tell me it’s over.”_  
_“If he does the final scene, I’m going to vomit.”_  
_“What’s he using for the veil, is that a handkerchief?”_  
_“I can’t watch.”_  
_“I can’t look away.”_  
     Although at first shocked by his audacity, Mr. Catt thankfully snapped back to the moment and stepped out onto the floor, cutting off the terrible display before it could reach its conclusion.  “Mr. Belmonte, I appreciate that you took my story to heart the other day, and it’s not that I don’t understand your quest for art, but—”  
     “It’s quite alright,” Eufemio stopped dancing and waved away Mr. Catt’s words with the height of arrogance.  “It is the curse of genius to be misunderstood in every era.  But someday this art of mine, this dance of mine will satisfy the hearts of all people.  Yes, it is destiny!”  
     Piqué’s mouth was hanging open.  
     “Please,” Lillie begged, “please somebody, make him stop.”  
     Aria buried her face in her knees.  “Urgh!”  
     Piqué’s sharp elbow alerted her to the part she’d been dreading.  
     Eufemio turned and gave an exaggerated bow to Aria, “My goddess.”  
     Both Piqué and Lillie inched away from her.  
_Traitors!_  
     Aria stared at Eufemio like a deer about to get hit by a German bomber.  _I wonder how hard it would be to get assigned a new partner for partnering classes now?_ A giddy laugh rose up in her throat at the thought and she struggled to squash it down.  
     “This feeling needs no words to express it,” he went on to her endless embarrassment, then somehow extracting a rose from the handkerchief he held, he placed it at her cringing feet.

***

     The boy’s words exploded in Mytho’s mind, shattering the darkness that plagued him. His head swung up sharply to focus on the weirdly painted boy across the studio.  _A feeling expressed without even a word…_   Light, and beauty, and grace bled through the cracks of his broken mind.  A girl dancing on water.  An unspoken love.  Mytho’s heart ached, and his eyes focused on the girl with the rose at her feet.  
_Aria._  
     Pain pounded into him with the force of a grenade, and he clutched at the front of his shirt.  His heart felt ready to explode from his chest.  He couldn’t breathe.  A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.  _But I can’t give in!_   Desperation warred against the darkness.  
     Beside him, Rue threw him a pale look.  “What’s wrong?”  
     Across the studio, the painted boy approached and dropped a second rose before Rue, swinging her attention away from Mytho.  “And one for you with the intent gaze!” he declared.  
_No, no, no!_   Mytho clutched at his hair, gasping.  
_“Give in!”_ the dark voice in his head demanded.  
     He couldn’t.  He looked up again, looked across the studio at Aria.  Her face was white, filled with terror.  _For me,_ he realized.  He blinked.  Suddenly it wasn’t Aria he was seeing.  Shadows lifted from his mind and all at once he saw _her._  
_Oh God,_ the prince’s terror swelled on another wave of pain.  He lurched to his feet, his eyes clearing at last of every trace of the shadows in his head.  He didn’t know how long he could hold the darkness at bay.  It wasn’t long enough.  He had to warn her.  He didn’t know how.  There wasn’t time.  Bringing his hands up, he made the mime for love, hoping against hope she’d understand.  
     The pain swelled and burst, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Afternoon of a Faun, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky to music by Claude Debussy, premiered in Paris in 1912. Nijinsky's aim with the choreography was to reproduce the imagery of ancient artwork found on Grecian urns, and Egyptian and Assyrian frescoes, on the stage. The ballet rejected classic formalism and was danced barefoot. Though only 12 minutes long, the work required 90 rehearsals due to the strange, unnatural movements required of the dancers. The general consensus among the performers was that Nijinsky was mad, and his ballet doomed to failure. Critical reception, though largely favorable, varied for the performance upon its premiere. It was both applauded and booed, though upon further performances received mostly applause. Paris police even attended the second night due to allegations of obscenity, for in the final act of the ballet, Nijinsky uses the nymph's scarf to imitate a certain ... obscene ... activity. Strangely, no photography exists to record that... aspect of Nijinsky's ballet, and the ending may have been temporarily amended to adhere to social propriety.


	8. Das eigensinnige Junge

**_The Willful Boy_ **

 

     Rue tossed and turned, tangling her legs in her sheets as a terrible late-summer storm lashed at the windows.  Darkness was split momentarily by lightning, casting garish shadows across her room in a frozen second.  Then shadows returned to the deep roll of thunder.  Frustrated, she cast her blankets aside and rolled over again, groaning into the pillow.  Sleep eluded her.  Every time she closed her eyes she saw Mytho again, rising to his feet, his hands forming the mime of _love.  
_     The _mime of love_ to _her._  
     It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him do it.  And yet… it was.  The flash of memory she’d experienced in that moment could only be classified as delusion.  It couldn’t be real, yet the image was burned into the backs of her eyes like a brand onto her skin.  The prince in all his regalia forming the mime for love… to someone else.  
_Impossible!_ Her mind rebelled.  The image was nothing more than a dark fantasy borne of fear.  The same fear she’d felt when Mytho had chosen Tutu at the lake.  The same fear—she had to admit—she experienced every time a shard of his heart had returned.  Even with the raven’s blood coursing through his veins she could feel him pulling away from her.  And underneath all of that, the dark suspicion that not even raven’s blood could ever make the prince love her.  _Because who could love a pathetic creature like you?  
_     She sat bolt upright at the sound of the raven’s voice in her thoughts.  Hot tears burned her already sore and swollen eyes.  She wanted to scream, but stifled the sound with a fist against her cold lips.  Drawing her knees up to her chest, Rue wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in the nest of blankets pooled in her lap.  
     She knew what the school was saying about them now.  The rumors had flown around the academy all day, whispering in the hallways around her like the constant susurrus of dark feathers in her mind to drive her mad. Vicious stories that Mytho had made the mime to _that boy._ Half of the students seemed to agree it was a sign of solidarity in the creative madness that was that awful solo.  The other half had far more dangerous and insidious assertions.  None of them knew the truth.  None of them saw the madness and shadows in Mytho’s eyes lift in that moment to reveal a stranger.  None of them saw the flash of terror on Duck’s face.  
     None of them knew what she did.  
     The real fear that had nagged her mind all day and kept her awake rose screaming to the surface.  _Does he know Tutu’s true identity now?_ she wondered.  It would be disastrous if he did.  Every time he saw Tutu, the raven’s blood flowing in his veins started to subside.  If he knew who she was, if he saw her _everywhere_ like Rue did, would it fail altogether?  She withered to think of it.  If that happened… she’d lose him forever.  
_He was never really yours to begin with,_ the raven’s voice seemed to whisper darkly in her mind.  
     Rue groaned again and flopped back, pulling the pillow over her head, burying her face in smothering darkness as if that would make the fear and the voice go away.  She lay that way for long minutes, listening to the raging storm outside hoping it would calm the storm within, before her breathing evened out and her mind slipped at last into a restless, tortured sleep.

***

   Fakhir stared hard at the book in his hand by the elusive light of the flickering candle at his elbow.  Despite his suspension, he maintained access to the school’s library, though he was forced to visit it only in the academy’s off hours when few students or staff were around.  Exhaustion weighed at him and he wondered idly what the hour was.  _Late, definitely late._    
     Outside the storm that lashed against the windows was a dull roar here in the stacks.  He rubbed at his eyes, trying to make sense of the tome before him.  It was one of dozens he’d pored through since that night at the underground lake.  Like all the others it was a twisted tale of fiction, penned under the name _von Rothbart,_ that should have absolutely no bearing or significance.  And yet…  
_“Once upon a time there was a knight.  The knight never faltered in his duty, no matter what it was.  He didn’t even falter when duty demanded he take the life of his lover.  His dedication was what he took pride in.  But the knight couldn’t do anything but carry out his duty, and even after death, he still seeks a duty to carry out…”_ Fakhir flipped several pages, eyes scanning over illustrations aimlessly as he skimmed the printed words.  All through the tale there were little snippets, tiny hints his eyes by now were trained to pick up.  Mentions of a _raven,_ of a _prince,_ and even Fakhir wasn’t immune to the similarities between the story’s knight and the knight from the Prince and the Raven.  He flipped toward the end. _“They say the knight, who became a ghost and now haunts this world, holds in his hand the bloodstained sword that pierced his lover’s breast…”_    
     Fakhir flipped the page again… and came to nothing.  A scathing curse left his lips in a hiss.  “Again?”  He swore and threw the book onto the study table in disgust.  The ending wasn’t simply unwritten, as with the Prince and the Raven.  It was torn out altogether.  He growled in frustration, having no doubt who was behind this butchery of books, though he marveled at the bookmen’s audacity.  Only students and faculty were allowed onto campus grounds.  Yet this wasn’t the first tale he’d discovered with pages missing.  
     In fact, every book that had seemingly called to him from the stacks had ended with the same ragged edges and missing pages.  It wasn’t just the scant few tomes of Drosselmeyer’s works.  His eyes drifted to the spines of the books stacked on the study table, _Koschei, Courland, Madge, Hamza, Matteo…_ the list went on.  All books seemingly unrelated, all having strangely consistent themes and symbols, and all missing the endings.  It wasn’t every book in the library—he knew that.  To test his theory, he’d gone randomly down the stacks and checked every book in a row.  It was only the tales that he chose out of some strange instinct that had suffered the mystery editor’s fate.  
     A flash of movement caught his eye and he barely turned his head to track it.  He could feel the eyes upon him, and a small smile played over his lips.  “I see you,” he whispered, not knowing nor caring if the silent watcher could hear him.  “Think you’re clever, do you?”  _Think I don’t know you’re watching me?_   He sneered in that direction and then put the invisible watcher from his mind.  _Not my problem.  
_     Not yet, anyway.  
     He was no fool.  He knew he’d have to face down the bookmen in open confrontation eventually.  He’d be ready for that day when it came.  
     “Fakhir!”  
     He threw a glance toward the stairs that led into this loft at the crown of the school’s library, unsurprised to see Uzura clattering her way toward him.  The waif had a disturbing tenacity for wandering wherever and whenever she liked—seemingly entirely without notice.  He wondered if she inherited that trait from Edel, or if her childlike appearance granted it.  “What?” he sighed, frustration from his fruitless search in the stacks leaking into his tone.  
     She looked up at him with wide, pale eyes.  “When people say Duck _‘goes well together’_ and is _‘love-dovey’_ and _‘it’s good a match’_ , what do they mean zura?”  
     Fakhir’s spine stiffened and he shot the doll a sharp look.  “What?”   
     Uzura blinked innocently at him.  
     Something hot and uncomfortable crept across his skin, and he drilled a glare down on the hapless doll.  _Where does she even get this stuff?_ “Who’s saying this?” he demanded.  
     She banged on her drum.  “Everyone says it, zura.  All day long.  What does it mean?”  
     His eyes narrowed suspiciously.  Though he’d only been gone from classes a few days, in Gold Crown terms it was ages.  Clearly he’d missed something, and he didn’t like it.  He shrugged, feigning indifference, and turned to the window.  “No clue,” he muttered, even as he tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that had migrated through his skin and clenched at his insides.  
     Uzura banged her drum angrily in response.  “Tell me, I want to know!”  
     “Hey!” he shouted back, reaching down to jerk the drumstick from her chubby little hand.  “Knock it off!”  
     Down below a chair scraped loudly across the hardwood floors and an angry voice rose up toward him.  “Can you please be quiet!”  
     Fakhir grimaced.  Until this moment he’d thought he was alone up here—save for the presence of the silent watcher.  “I’m sorry,” he called down.  
     Uzura pouted up at him.  
     He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, to Uzura this time.  He offered the drumsticks back to her.  “In this building you have to be quiet.”  
     She pouted for another second or two, then took the drumsticks back.  “Okay zura,” she nodded solemnly.  “I promise.”  
     “Good.”  
     She cast another entreating look at him, “But what does lovey-dovey mean, zura?”  
     He sighed and slumped into a chair, pushing the pile of books away from himself and wishing there was something more he could _do._ “I don’t know, Uzura,” he muttered.  “I don’t know.”

***

     Mytho woke to pain.  Always to pain.  He twisted up in the bedsheets, curling into a tight ball as agony writhed through him like a living thing, like a jolt of white-hot electricity that burned away every memory, every independent thought, every scrap of will, and left him nothing more than a dry empty husk.  
_“Very clever, prince,”_ the dark voice in Mytho’s mind purred.  Anger tinged its tone.  _“But not clever enough.  Your warning was in vain.”  
_     “What do you want?” Mytho moaned, clutching his hands to his head as sharp pain throbbed through him.  
_“We’ll start with your surrender,”_ it gloated, _“after that?  Maybe the world.”  
_     “No!” he meant it as a cry.  It came out as a whisper.  
_“You’re stubborn, boy, I’ll give you that.  But everyone breaks in the end.  Even you.”  
_     Mytho panted as the pain swelled, as the white-hot light in his mind became a blazing star that ripped his very soul asunder.  Shadows followed in its wake.  He turned again, lying limp upon the simple cot in the school’s infirmary and staring blankly up at the dark ceiling.  
_Everyone gives in…  
_     A single tear slipped down his cheek to disappear into his hair.  
     Long after it had dried, the door to the infirmary opened and quiet footsteps approached.  A woman in a long gray dress with a veil on her head set a tray by his bed.  The smell of food wafted toward him.  Footsteps sounded and the woman disappeared.  Mytho watched shadows move across the ceiling as the sun rose and shifted in the sky.  The door opened again.  
     “It looks like you’re feeling quite a bit better,” a familiar voice greeted him.  
     Mytho slid his eyes to the left and saw Mr. Catt standing near the foot of the cot.  
_“Answer him well, boy,”_ the voice ordered.  
     “Yes,” the word sounded wooden in his mouth.  “Sorry for making you worry.”  
     A small hesitation, Mr. Catt shifted.  “Did something happen?” he asked, a concerned knot forming between his bushy eyebrows.  “That mime was indeed quite splendid, but it seemed so sorrowful and fragile that I must say I’m a bit concerned.”  
_“Ha!  Concerned for his own job perhaps.  Wouldn’t want to be embroiled in allegations of indecency at the school, would he?  Dissuade him.”  
_     Mytho swallowed, his mouth felt dry.  “Nothing happened.”        
     The instructor nodded, his movements still cautious.  “I see.  Well, rest for a little while longer.”  He turned to go, his footsteps almost silent on the cold tile floor.  
     Something almost like _will_ surged up in Mytho with a flash of blinding pain.  “Mr. Catt—”  
     The teacher froze, his back to Mytho.  “What is it?”  
_“Keep your mouth shut,”_ the voice growled warningly.  
     Mytho panted past another blinding shock of pain that speared his chest, clutching his hand just over his heart.  “Love shines most beautifully when you feel so strongly that you would give up your life for that person, doesn’t it?”   
     The teacher’s back went straight and his head swiveled around.  “It’s possible it does,” he ventured carefully.  “But love cannot keep shining forever on that feeling alone.”  
_It doesn’t have to shine forever though, does it?_ Mytho thought desperately.  _Just long enough?  
__“Stupid boy!”  
_     Mytho’s face twisted as another lance of agony ripped through him in bloody shreds.  “What?”  
     Sadness echoed from the teacher’s eyes, a soul-deep sorrow that couldn’t be quenched.  He opened his mouth to say something, but no words followed.  The sorrow in his eyes shattered like a mirror breaking into a thousand parts.  He closed his mouth and swallowed back whatever words he might have said.  Behind him the door opened, and he turned away from Mytho.  “Oh, Miss Kerrane.  Here to visit, are you?”  
     Rue’s clear voice sounded from the shadows beyond where Mytho could see, “Yes.”  
     Discreetly, Mr. Catt retreated and Rue entered the room, approaching nearer than the instructor had.  She stood right by his bed, close enough to touch.  For some reason Mytho wanted her to reach out and take his hand.  The thought left such a longing inside him, it rivaled only the white-hot agony for its ache.  His eyes travelled up her, seeing her slender arms pulled protectively around her waist as if expecting a blow.  The tightness of her jaw over the slender curve of her neck.  Her lucent skin, so pale with fear.  Her eyes… crimson eyes.  
     Shadows and feathers gathered in his mind, closing out the longing and ache.  Cutting off the pain in his chest.  Mytho smiled at her.  Or rather, _something_ in him, something dark and ugly, smiled out at her through him.  “Let’s capture a sacrifice.”  
     Her throat worked several times before she answered.  “No.  I’ll take care of that.  You just go back to your dorm.”  
     The _something_ in him twisted his expression into a cruel mask.  “ _You_ will?”  Incredulity dripped scornfully from the words.  Mytho didn’t even recognize his own voice.  The vile thing inside him spread, consuming him.  
     Rue’s eyes went wide at the malice in his words.  “What is it?” she snapped defensively, “what’s so funny?”  
     “Nothing,” he answered mockingly.  _In fact…_ “I’m looking forward to it.”

***

     Rue’s heart pounded as she fled from the infirmary.  It took a force of iron will to keep her head held high and her steps measured as she strode down the hall and outside into the crisp, cool, rain-washed air of the quad.  Only there did she finally inhale the deep breath her lungs were aching for.  She wanted to wrap her arms around herself, find a small dark closet, and hide away.  But she wouldn’t.  _I am the raven’s daughter,_ she reminded herself, reaching deep for some small scrap of inner strength.  _I can do this.  
_     Yet the mocking look in Mytho’s eyes just now… the cruel words of the raven.  They all choked her.  None of them believed in her.  _Nobody believed in her._ She wouldn’t cry.  
     Lifting her chin, Rue’s eyes swept absently across the quad and she saw a familiar figure standing alone by the swan fountain.  _I_ can _do this._   Balling her hands into fists, Rue descended the gentle curve of the hill toward him.  
     Forcing a smile onto her face, Rue finished her approach with a few sashaying steps.  “Can I have a moment?” she asked, affecting a throaty purr.  
     The boy, Eufemio, swung his head around in surprise.  “It’s you!” he exclaimed, “The rare beauty of the intense gaze.”  He smiled wide and bowed with a flourish.  Extracting a silk handkerchief, he lay the dainty cloth on a damp stone bench and sat beside it.  “But of course, my heart is always open for a beautiful lady.”  
     Rue’s smile soured a bit though he didn’t seem to notice.  Instead of sitting, she leaned down and grasped his hand, angling her body to give him the demurest glimpse of cleavage.  “Come,” she murmured, “perhaps we can talk somewhere more private.”  
     His brows knit together, and he looked around at the nearly empty quad, “More private?  I’m not sure that’s—”  
     Rue laughed lightly.  “Come now,” she murmured, tracing his collar with one finger, “Just for a little while.”  
     “I think I may have given the wrong impression yesterday,” the boy started.  “My feelings for Aria are—”  
_Oh how the hell does Mytho do this!_ Rue wondered wildly as Eufemio started to pull his hand away.  _The kiss!_ She’d almost forgotten.  Throwing caution to the wind, Rue wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck and pressed her lips to his.  For one full second he stiffened against her, and then something dark curled out of her and into him and the kiss turned hungry, needy.  When Rue finally extricated herself she resisted the urge to wipe her mouth, feeling the sudden urge to wash herself of a sudden grimy sensation.  
     Eufemio gazed up at her with a glazed expression.  He cleared his throat and stood.  “Where to?”  
     She smiled coyly, pushing down her own disgust.  “To a place where we can both prove our love to each other.”

***

     “Can somebody explain to me why Eufemio loses his mind and _I’m_ the one who gets detention for it?” Aria grumbled as she pushed the broom across the main studio floor.  
     From where she was sitting nearby, neatly printing out an essay for class that was due that day, Piqué shrugged.  “It’s the unfairness of the world.”  
     “He is getting more creative in his detentions at least,” Aria grumbled.  Usually she only had to stay late from classes to work.  Today he’d demanded she be at the school two hours early as well.  At least her friends, in a show of solidarity, had roused themselves at the crack of dawn as well to keep her company.  
     “Mr. Catt was furious,” Lillie agreed, appearing to knit though she just seemed to be making knots of the yarn in her hands.  “I’ve never seen him like that.  I thought he’d blow up right on the dance floor.”  
     “Yeah,” Piqué muttered, starting to get worked up, “Although how he could have thought you put him up to it, Duck, I don’t know.  Why would _any_ girl want to be the center of _that_ kind of attention?”  
     “Well he really shouldn’t have given her the rose,” Lillie mused.  
     “He shouldn’t have given the rose to Rue, is what he shouldn’t have done.”  
     “Or anything that came before that,” Aria mumbled under her breath, shuddering again at the memory.  
     “And here I thought your prince had finally come, Duck,” Lillie giggled.  “When he marched up all strong and demanding at the fountain like that.”  
     “You shut your mouth,” Aria replied hotly.  
     Lillie laughed outright, and Piqué joined in.  “The look on your face,” Piqué chortled.  “And then when Mytho made that mime for love?  Who would have thought Duck and the old prince would be rivals for the new prince’s love?”  
     Aria flicked a pan full of dust in her direction.  “Eufemio is a prince only in his dreams,” she retorted.  “And you shouldn’t be spreading nasty rumors like that anyway.”  
     “It’s not like nobody’s heard them,” Lillie scoffed.  “You know what they used to say about him and Fakhir, what they still say, that they—”  
     “Yes, and both of them could be suspended from school or worse if someone ever suspected there was any truth to those rumors,” Aria reminded them.  “I mean, what do you think the _Volksgemeinschaft_ is…” a sudden wave of dizziness struck her, and she cut off midsentence, the trailing end of that thought drifting elusively away.  
     Both girls threw her strange looks.  “The what of the what?” Piqué asked.  
     Aria swallowed hard and looked to her broom.  _What was that?_ Her hand closed naturally over her pendant.  It’s like she knew instinctively what to say, but couldn’t remember why… _or even what I was talking about._ “Nothing,” she muttered.  “Never mind.”  
     “Anyway,” Lillie shrugged, “Eufemio is the one who should be suspended.”  
     Aria could only agree with that.  “I don’t know why he’s suddenly acting this way.”  
     “You could always take this chance to date him,” Lillie teased.  
     “It’s bad enough I have to dance with him,” Aria complained.  
     Her audience laughed.   
     Piqué sobered first, “Still Duck, you have to admit it’s kind of strange.  It’s not clear whether Mytho’s mime for love was meant for Eufemio or not.”  
_No,_ Aria agreed silently.  _It wasn’t._ Because while everyone had been looking at Mytho, Aria was looking at him too.  And apparently only she had seen that he was looking right at _her._ The memory of it chilled her to the bones and she didn’t know why.  
     “Who else could have it been?” Lillie demanded.  
     “Literally anyone else in this room after that solo,” Piqué grumped.  “The way he’s been acting, it could have been for all the girls.”  
     “What a beast!”  
     Aria’s heart dropped like a stone in her chest at her words, her eyes going to the window.  _I think that was the real Mytho, he seemed to be in such pain.  I wonder what he meant.  
_     “Whoa, is that him?” Piqué had turned, her nose pressed to the glass of the window at her back.  
     Lillie immediately swung around, “Oh it is!”  
     “Mytho?” Aria asked, abandoning her broom.  
     “No, Eufemio!”  Lillie was on her knees facing the window now, her knitting abandoned.  She threw a laughing look at Aria.  “And you’ll never guess who he’s with.”  
     Aria pressed up behind them and gasped.  “Rue!”  
     “Holy flying sissonne,” Piqué breathed as the ballerina bent and kissed Eufemio full on the mouth.  
     Aria’s jaw dropped in astonishment.  She pressed close to the window as Rue straightened up and led Eufemio away toward the far end of the quad where the art division was housed.  “What is going on?” she breathed.  
     “Looks like someone’s not too happy about a certain someone miming his feelings of _love_ to every random stranger, and is looking to get some kinky revenge,” Piqué grinned.  “If you know what I mean.”  
     “The dead in the catacombs know what you mean,” Lillie drawled dryly.  
     Aria barely heard them over the rushing sound of her own blood pumping fast through her veins.  _Mytho is still in the infirmary, which means he can’t try to take someone’s heart.  Rue wouldn’t… would she?_   In her fist, the pendant was cold and silent, but there wouldn’t be a warning if _Rue_ was trying to do something nefarious, would there?  Yet Aria felt in her bones that something bad was in the offing.   
     “I have to go!” she shouted, spinning on her heel and fleeing toward the door.  
     “Wait, what about your detention!” Piqué shouted after her.  
     “Finish it for me!” Aria called back mindlessly, hitting the door at a dead run.  She never thought she’d say it, but she had to get to Eufemio before something awful happened.

***

     In the dark recesses of the art building on the far corner of campus, Rue pushed through the door to the cavernous basement chamber where the drama department stored the stage pieces they kept for the various student productions.  She recognized bits and pieces of scenery for the upcoming presentation of Giselle, and wandered down the warren of props with Eufemio at her back.  
     “What exactly is it you want to do in a place like this?” Eufemio’s accented voice echoed behind her, carrying more than a little lust.  
     Rue suppressed a shudder.  _Maybe I overdid it with the kiss._   _Is lust the same thing as love?_   Probably not.  But it would have to do.  Corrupting a pure love was the only way to properly prepare a heart for the raven’s sacrifice, and Rue thought it ironically suiting that she should corrupt the boy’s love for _Duck_ to get it.  She threw a teasing smirk over her shoulder, “Are you scared?”  
     “Scared?” he puffed out his chest.  “No word is more unsuited to me than _fear._   Though I must confess if there were one thing I actually did fear, it would be the loss of beauty.”  
     Rue smiled widely at him, hoping her expression looked encouraging.  “If you lose your heart, you’ll lose that fear as well.”  Then almost to herself, “I hope father will be pleased and satisfied with this.”  
     Eufemio’s eyes widened.  “You’ll do me the favor of introducing me to your father?”  
     “That’s right,” she purred.   
     He stopped in place, and Rue turned to face him fully.  “But isn’t this too sudden?” the foolish boy objected, “After all we know almost nothing about each other.  We’re like strangers.”  
     “It doesn’t matter,” she crooned, stepping closer and letting her hands lay against his chest.  “I desperately need you.”  
     Eufemio’s face twisted and he shook his head, stepping away.  “No, no this isn’t right.  You—you can’t have feelings for me too.  You _and_ Aria… I can’t—”  
     Rue rolled her eyes and grabbed his face, kissing him again.  _Hopefully this will shut him up._ But it didn’t work.  He pulled away.  “Love me,” Rue whispered.  “Love only me.”  
     His eyes were agonized.  “I can’t,” he whispered back.  “Love you, yes that I can do.  But _only_ you?  I always hoped to capture the love of a beautiful woman, but to capture the love of two?  Few men are so fortunate.  I would be a fool to waste that.”  
_Tell me he isn’t serious._ Rue swallowed back the taste of bile and let him slide away from her.  She backed away a few steps.  “Fine,” she growled, “even if it is just for one night, I’ll have your heart to feed my father’s hunger!”  Drawing on her power she transformed into Krähe, the dark altar forming at her feet, and the unfamiliar heavy weight of the raven’s wings at her back.  
     Eufemio’s eyes widened at the sight of her.  “What beauty!” he gasped, staggering back in his awe.  “You are glorious!”  
     She preened a bit at his praise.  “Love only me,” she repeated to him, drawing on her dark power to command him.  “And hate everyone else.”  
     His eyes glazed and he took one unsteady step toward her, “I—”  
     “NO!” another voice split the shadows of the room and a flash of white drew Krähe’s attention.  She cursed under her breath as Tutu leapt forward.  _How does she always know where to interrupt?_  
     The impertinent interloper reached a hand toward Eufemio, “Don’t do this,” she pleaded with him.  
     The glazed expression faded from his face as he beheld the ethereal girl in white.  Then his head whipped around to stare at Krähe on her dark altar.  “Two of you?”  He looked between them again, his head moving so fast on his neck it threatened to fly off altogether.  “Such beautiful girls!  So many, and all of you fighting over me?”  He stumbled back a step, panic rising in his eyes.  “So much beauty in this world, so much love to have and give!  I could never promise myself to only one!”  With a cry of despair, the boy turned and ran.  “Too much!” he could be heard crying out as he fled, “too much beauty to be contained!”  
     Krähe froze, staring after him in stunned silence.  
     Tutu blinked at where he’d stood, dropping her hands to the edges of her skirt.  “Uh … that was … different.”  
     Krähe growled at her own ineptitude.  “He’s an idiot.”  
     “I’m not going to argue with you on that,” the other girl agreed on a prim murmur.  
     She shot a sharp look at Tutu, surprised at the judgement.  “I thought he was your friend?”  
     Tutu made a strangled noise.  “No.  Not really.  We’re barely dance partners.”  
     Krähe huffed.  
     Looking awkward, Tutu turned toward her.  “So… what now?”  
     She glared back a moment before turning stiffly away.  “Let’s never speak of this again.”

***

     Rubbing her arms against the chill of the morning air, Aria stepped out of the art school into the quad, still a little bewildered by whatever had just happened in the basement.  To her surprise she saw Fakhir standing at the corner of the administration building with Uzura at his side.  “Fakhir!” she called to him.  
     His eyes picked her out immediately, then looked past her toward the building at her back.  “Did something happen?” he asked sharply.  
     She glanced back and paled at the dense cloud of black feathers, the murder of crows, that blanketed the building.  “No,” she answered honestly.  “Something might have happened, but then it didn’t, and honestly, I’m not even really sure what _did_ happen except that nothing happened.”  
     Fakhir’s eyes narrowed.  “What?”  
     “Anyway,” she faced him, “What are you doing here?”  
     He held up the books in his hand as an answer.  “Are you alright?” he asked, still suspicious.  
     “Oh, I’m fine,” she waved off his concern.  “Hey, actually—” she brought her hands up and shaped them into the mime for love.  
     Fakhir blanched, “What is that for?”  
     “Mytho did this mime in class yesterday,” she explained to him.  “It’s a really long story that doesn’t really matter anymore, but for a second he seemed like the real Mytho and he looked right at me and did this,” her hands went back to the mime.  “Do you have any idea what it could mean?”  Because it certainly had seemed like it _meant_ something.  The desperation on his face, the way his eyes had burned into her.  It was like he was trying to tell her something.  Something more than just the obvious meaning of the mime.  Almost like he was trying to _warn_ her of something.  She had no idea of what.  
     Fakhir just stared at her, his expression unreadable.  
     “Are you lovey dovey with Mytho zura?” Uzura asked innocently, blinking up awe-struck eyes at her.  
     Aria gaped at the girl, “What?”  
     “Mind your own business, Uzura!” Fakhir snapped.  He threw her another indecipherable look and then turned away.  “We should get going,” he muttered.  
     “Oh,” she blinked at his back.  “Okay.  Well, I’ll talk to you later then!”  Overhead, the clock chimed the hour and Aria paled.  “Oh shoot!  I’m late!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to all for the long wait on this chapter! I swear I haven't abandoned the story! I've had a case of tendinitis in my wrist that has delayed the posting and completion of chapters. Hopefully it will clear up soon and I can get back on track with everything. Thank you all for your patience!


	9. Die Sterntaler

_**The Star Talers** _

 

     “You knew, didn’t you?”  
     Rue closed the door behind her, both hands still on the knob as she faced Mytho.  He stood before her oriel window staring at her reflection in the dark glass.  She could see his face, the sneer that twisted his lips, the strange reddish hue that tainted his eyes now.  _I did that,_ she thought with a twinge of guilt.   
     “Knew what?” he asked in that smooth, urbane voice.  The sound of it sent shivers down her spine.  
     He sounded like the raven.  
     Rue swallowed hard, forcing words through a throat gone suddenly dry.  “You knew that I’d be unable to capture a sacrifice myself.”  
     He turned then to face her, that same crooked smile in place on his lips.  He cocked his head at her, a strange light in his eyes that had never been there before.  He looked amused.  And cruel.  “So it didn’t go well, I take it?”  
     Rue ground her teeth together, clenching her fists so tightly behind her back she could feel her nails cut into the soft flesh of her palms.  She could feel the blood trickle through her fisted fingers.  
     “You weren’t loved so much that he would give you his life,” Mytho tsked and shook his head sadly.  “Poor baby.”  
     The words tore at her and she launched herself across the room toward him.  “What happened to you?” she demanded.  
     His eyes flashed, freezing her in place.  Something dark and awful shone in those eyes and he reached out, grasping her jaw with a bruising grip.  “You happened,” he snarled.  
     “Mytho,” she gasped.  “You’re hurting me.”  
     For a moment she didn’t think he cared.  His face twisted, becoming crueler, and then… it shattered.  She could almost see it in his eyes, like a mirror exploding into a thousand fragments.  He released her and staggered back, staring with horror at the mark of his fingers on her skin.  “Rue?” he asked.  
     Her heart twisted and she reached for him.  
     He pulled away, clutching at his chest, almost doubling over as if he were in great agony.  “What’s happening?” he moaned.  
     “It’s alright, my love,” she crooned, wrapping her arms around him, running a hand through his hair.  Tears stung her eyes at the lie.  “Everything is going to be alright.”  
     “It… hurts,” he gasped.  
     “Don’t fight it,” she begged.  “It’ll all be over soon if you just let go.”  
     He tensed and pulled away from her.  “No!” he cried out, stumbling across the room away from her.  He caught himself against the door frame.  “Have to fight, I have to—” he threw the door open.  
     “Mytho!” she cried out, dashing after him.  But when she reached the hall he was nowhere in sight.  “Mytho…”  
     Retreating to her room, she closed the door and leaned against it, covering her face with her hands as the tears ran free.

***

     Fakhir woke with a gasp, heart pounding in his chest, the dream still a living thing in his imagination.  He scrubbed his face with both hands.  _What the hell?_ His eyes fell to the stack of books he’d brought back from the school library, neatly piled on the desk beside his bed.  Angrily he reached out and swiped them from the desk, sending them scattering across the floor.  Doubtless they were to blame for the restless visions he saw in sleep.  
     Rising, he stepped to the window and stared disconsolately down at the dark street.  Still… the dream was far more difficult to push aside.  He’d been in the woods on Gringolet—the horse Kyron gifted to him years ago.  And he was fighting someone.  He didn’t know who.  He only saw his opponent as a shape in the fog, a mysterious towering figure on horseback in a full suit of armor.  In the dream they battled, exchanging powerful blows.  And even though it was a dream, Fakhir’s arms and back ached from the exertion as if it had really happened.  
     He scrubbed a hand across his face again and sighed, recalling the final moments of the dream that had wakened him in cold terror.  He’d stabbed the knight, his sword sliding easily through his opponent’s ribs.  But when the knight raised his visor… his face was Fakhir’s.  
     “Idiot,” he swore, spinning away and pacing across the room.  He heard the murmur of voices from below and realized Kyron must be up.  On impulse, and to avoid the chance of any more disturbing dreams, he grabbed a shirt and jerked it on over his head.  Padding barefoot down the narrow stairs into the smithy’s living area, Fakhir turned the corner into a comfortable domestic scene.  
     A fire was banked in the stove warding off the faint chill of evening.  Glowing coals radiated heat behind the glass panes in the door.  Uzura was wrapping the handle of one of her drumsticks in the corner, her tiny face scrunched up into an intense expression of focus.  Kyron sat in a chair near the stove, one of his favorite books in hand, it’s dogeared pages worn and well loved.  The smith looked up on hearing Fakhir’s entrance and he smiled.  
     “I thought you’d gone to bed already.”  
     Fakhir shrugged, “Couldn’t sleep.”  
     “There’s tea,” Kyron gestured at the pot warming on the stove.  
     For lack of anything better to do, Fakhir grabbed an earthenware cup on his way to the stove.  He poured a fragrant measure from the pot, then dragged another chair up, and with a huff collapsed into it.  Disconsolately he stared at the embers glowing behind the glass panels of the cast iron door, ignoring the _thwack thwack thwack_ sounds behind him as Uzura sat in the corner and toyed tunelessly with her drum.  From his place in the opposite chair, Kyron put a thumb in the book he was reading and closed its pages, lowering it to his lap to examine Fakhir.  
     “Something on your mind?” the older man asked.  
     “You could say that,” he muttered.  A lot of things plagued him really.  It’s a wonder he got any sleep at all.  _My best friend, who just happens to be a prince from a fairytale, has been poisoned with raven’s blood by his supposed girlfriend—who just so happens to be the raven’s daughter.  Now he’s acting like the enemy, going around and trying to rip people’s hearts out and I still haven’t altogether figured out why.  The whole town I live in has been cursed for fifteen years and I’m the only one who knows about it, well… me and a secret society of bookmen who just may be stalking me now with more nefarious plans in the wings.  Oh, and my only allies in all of this is a wooden doll who’s the resurrected form of a living marionette, and a girl who’s a duck who can turn into a faery princess from the story who is cursed to never be with the one she loves.  And oh, by the way, it seems that curse has teeth since the prince just told her he loved her… sort of… and things aren’t looking good on that front right now.  And all I can do about any of it is spend my days poring over useless books looking for any sign of something, because I’m just the futile incarnation of the knight in the story who gets ripped apart by the raven._  
     Kyron appraised him silently.  “Are you worried about going back to classes tomorrow?”  
     He almost laughed.  _That_ was the least of his worries.  Broodingly, he stared into the embers and didn’t answer.  Fakhir couldn’t say how many nights he’d sat with Kyron—and later Mytho—just like this as a child.  If he had to really think about it, except for those vague memories of a toddler, the smithy was the only real home Fakhir had ever known.  And save for a few shadowy impressions even more dim than those of his mother’s house, Kyron was the only father he had.  Yet there were so many secrets that stood between them now.  So much left unsaid.  Years of silence gaped like barely healed wounds, and even before that, Fakhir had never told Kyron of the bookmen, or even of his own mother and father.  Hell, he hadn’t even told the blacksmith his real name—not that he could remember the damn thing now.   
     Leaning forward, elbows propped on his knees, Fakhir rubbed at his eyes with weary hands.  “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he admitted.  
     Concern knotted Kyron’s brow.  “Fakhir,” he began, a paternal note to his voice.  “I didn’t say anything when you were evicted from the dorms.  Nor did I ask when you were suspended from school.”  
     “…and I thank you for that,” Fakhir murmured.  He’d been too raw to offer any explanations.  
     Kyron went on as if he’d said nothing.  “For a long time, I didn’t trust your methods.  And part of that might have been the infection of a heart shard, and part of that might have been me.  I want to trust you now which is why I’ve remained silent.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not here if you want to talk, and it doesn’t mean I won’t ask if I’m worried.  And I’m worried.”  
     Fakhir let out a bark of bitter laughter.  
     “Is this about Mytho?”  
     He sighed.  “Yes,” he said honestly.  “And no.  And yes again, and I don’t even know.”  He sat back in the chair wearily.  “He isn’t really Mytho anymore,” he admitted, “and he is, and things have gotten far too complicated for me to understand.  I failed to protect him, and now I don’t know if I can save him, and…” he trailed off.  _And that isn’t even what has me all twisted up right now._ Fakhir threw a look at Kyron.  The blacksmith was the one who’d first read The Prince and The Raven to him as a boy.  He was the first one to ask all the questions a curious child could field on the strange story.  “Who was Tutu to the prince in the story?” he asked, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper.  
     Kyron arched a brow at him in question.  
     “The story says so little about her, and less about their interaction.  She was a faery exiled to the woods for a curse who warned the prince about hunting the raven, but…” _But why would Mytho tell her he loved her?_   And more to the point, why would the story even mention her curse if it had no real bearing on the plot?  It seemed a random detail on an otherwise vaguely described side character.  _And why would that barely mentioned side character be the only person who can restore the scattered shards of the prince’s heart?_   Fakhir scrubbed at his face again and voiced the real concern behind his present angst.  “What if the story is more than a story?” he asked.  
     “It almost has to be,” Kyron admitted, gesturing around at the town in general with one vague wave of his hand.  
     “No, I mean—” Fakhir broke off, thinking of Cundrie, of Aria, of everything.  “What if it isn’t really a story at all?”   
     “You mean what if it really happened?” Incredulity laced the blacksmith’s words.  
     “What if it’s an allegory for something else?” Fakhir ventured.  His mind was on the dozen or so other books he’d read through.  They all seemed connected and yet they weren’t.  But what if they _did_ have something in common?  “What if the prince never came _out_ of the story?  What if the story came from the prince?”  
     Kyron leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.  “You mean what if it’s true?”  
     “Or parts of it are,” Fakhir corrected.  If there was any seed of truth to the story, surely that could explain how so many disparate authors had eluded to it.  Or there might be an older fairytale behind all of it, which would make it just that:  a story.  Fakhir’s head hurt from mulling it all over.  But some things couldn’t be denied.  “Mytho _is_ real,” he said firmly.  “And so is she.”  
     Both of the blacksmith’s eyebrows went up now.  “She?” he asked, weighting the word suggestively.  “So that’s what this is all about?  A girl?”  
_Isn’t it always?_ Fakhir thought cynically.  He’d read enough stories to know _that._   The uncomfortable ache he’d felt when Uzura told him of the rumors at school, and again when Aria showed him the mime for love this morning, returned.  He rubbed absently at his chest.  _Is this jealousy?_ He wondered.  _Do I care about Aria?_  
     Though he was loath to admit it aloud, in the silence of his own mind Fakhir could acknowledge that he _did_ care somewhat about the girl.  But did he care about her like _that?_   And when did she even start mattering to him at all?  
     An image appeared in his mind:  Tutu’s face, her closed eyes underscored by shadows, her pale skin almost luminescent by the moonlight, her hand outstretched and reaching for him even in her sleep, and on her delicate skin the ugly mark of bruises standing as silent testimony to the quiet strength and bravery she possessed.  Fakhir closed his eyes against it, wanting to block the memory out, but all he saw in its place was her hands forming the mime for love.  
     Realizing he intended to remain silent on the subject, Kyron sighed and looked to the fire.  “If you care about this girl, whoever she is, you should tell her.”  With that simple advice he opened his book again and began to read.  
     Fakhir continued to brood, his eyes on the fire.  _“He looked right at me…”_ her voice whispered in his memory.  Why?  Why did that seem to matter so much?   
     His own voice answered the question in the silent recesses of his mind.  _Because she’s_ his _princess.  And now you know it._   Was that what the dream was about?  An enemy in the fog, an opponent to fight, something _concrete_ to face.  Only to defeat it, to stab his enemy in the heart… and realize it was himself all along?  
_Idiot!_  
     Fakhir jumped to his feet and strode restlessly across the room.  He was aware of Kyron’s eyes on him, even as the smith concentrated on his book.  Uzura’s head came up in the corner, her hands stilling upon her drum.  They all heard it at the same time… the pounding sound of hoofbeats.  Glancing back, he met Kyron’s puzzled gaze.  The smith set his book aside and rose, and as one they moved toward the door.  
     Outside a fog had fallen over the town, a remnant of the recent storms, and the buildings on the other side of the street were merely hazy outlines through the mist.  The sound of a horseman echoed off the buildings, seeming almost on top of them.  Fakhir took one step out the door and looked down the street in its direction but saw nothing.  Again, he shot Kyron a look.  The blacksmith seemed worried.  
     The sound ceased suddenly, and Uzura poked her head around Fakhir’s legs, her little mouth in an O as she studied the murky darkness.  
     “Some fool rider,” Kyron dismissed with a shrug, turning back into the room.  
     But before his words had even faded from the air, the hoofbeats took up again, the sound almost right next to them this time.  Drawn toward it, Fakhir took one further step into the street.  A figure appeared from the mist, a giant horse, its rider hunched low over its back.  Fakhir lurched out of the way as the rider barreled recklessly down the street to disappear in the shadows on the other side.  He threw a panicked look at Kyron as if to assure himself he had seen what he thought he’d just seen.  
     The smith was white-faced, his mouth set in a tense line when he met Fakhir’s eyes.  He nodded once, then looked back in the direction the rider had gone.  
     So they both _had_ seen it then.  The reckless rider was the very same knight from Fakhir’s dream.  And he’d just ridden into the side of a building as if it wasn’t even there.

***

     “Did you hear it last night?” Lillie asked excitedly.  “Everyone’s talking about it!”  
     “Of course, I heard it,” Piqué scoffed.  “It was impossible not to hear.  It nearly shook down the rafters around us.”  
     “I didn’t see him,” Lillie went on excitedly, “But I talked to Gerta who was with Dylan at the time, and Dylan says he saw him _ride right into a building!”_  
     Piqué grinned.  “I heard he and his horse leapt right over the canal, cleared it in one jump.”  
     “I can’t believe it, it’s so exciting.  Goldkrone Towne has its very own ghost!  Aren’t you excited Duck?”  
     Aria stirred when Lillie shook her arm violently and glanced over at her friend.  “Hmm?”  She’d been thinking of Mytho, of that mime for love he’d made.  Something kept bothering her about that, niggling at her mind like some pesky mosquito.  She felt like there was something more there, something she _had_ to remember but couldn’t recall.  It had occupied her mind in almost every spare moment to distraction since it happened.  
     Piqué rolled her eyes, “You haven’t heard a word we’ve said, have you?”  
     She frowned, “Were you talking about something?”  
     Lillie laughed, “Give her a break, Piqué.  She’s all spaced out.  After all, today’s the day that—”  
     “That’s right!” Piqué clapped her hands together excitedly, stars shining clearly in her eyes.  “Today’s the day Fakhir comes back from suspension!”  
     “I wonder just how wretched he’ll look when he comes in today,” Lillie muttered.  
     Suddenly Aria felt bad, she’d completely forgotten that today was Fakhir’s first day back.  “I didn’t remember…”  
     Piqué shot her a funny look, “Then what’s got you flying in the clouds this morning?  I thought maybe you had a thing for him, or something.”  
     Her face immediately felt hot, “What!?  No!”  For some bizarre reason her mind flashed back to the dream she’d had days ago, when she’d seen him dead being sucked into a void.  Aria forced the image—and the accompanying discomfort in her chest—aside.  She shook her head furiously.  “I don’t think of Fakhir like _that.”_    
     Piqué laughed and clapped her on the back.  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.  But it’s okay, you’re my friend and everything, so even if I’ve been crushing on Fakhir for years despite his recent foray into the dark and dangerous, I’ve got to support you, haven’t I?”  
     “Me too!” Lillie immediately jumped onboard.  “Even if he’s scary, if you like him Duck—”  
     “Wait, wait,” Aria protested.  
     Both girls slung their arms around her waist, pinning her between them, “But first you’ve got to tell him!” they sang in unison.  
_Grr,_ she thought as they dragged her forward toward Noverre Hall and the school cafeteria where the smells of breakfast were wafting over the quad.  _I really,_ really, _need new friends._  
     “Whoa,” Lillie came to a stop, dragging the rest of their procession to a halt along with her.  “What’s going on here?”  Her eyes were fixed on the steps where a group of students stood in various costumes and poses like living statues.  Some were painted to look like clay or stone, others were covered in glittering sequins and beads, one girl was smeared with some kind of substance that made her appear to be cast in glass.  Even her hair was gelled with the stuff.  
     “It’s the living art display,” Piqué explained disgruntledly.  “And of course they had to pick the most inconvenient place to put it.”  
     “ _It?”_ Aria asked.  “But these are…” _students._  
     “It’s a protest,” Piqué shrugged.  “The ballet school’s production of Giselle for the summer showcase booted the drama club’s selection of a Wagner opera, so they banded together and decided to peaceably block the entrances to all the buildings instead.”  She looked around the quad as if to back up her words.  
     Aria looked as well and saw that there were indeed small scatterings of students around the main entrances of every building.  Even the side door of the dance school, where Mr. Catt seemed to be gesticulating wildly as he attempted to argue with what ultimately amounted to living stone.  His angry voice rang faintly across the quad.  
     “They’re not _really_ blocking the entrance,” Lillie ventured, squeezing between two statuesque students to climb the stairs between them.  
     “That’s what makes it a peaceful protest,” Piqué agreed, stomping in behind her.  
     “It’s a little weird,” Aria whispered, careful not to brush against the living statues as she followed them.  
     “Yeah, don’t go too close to them, Duck, I doubt that paint stuff comes out of clothes very easily.”   
     One of the students being held aloft by the rather impressive upper body strength of two girls, swung her head up at the sound of Aria’s unfortunate nickname.  “Duck?”      
     Lillie made an _eep_ sound and ran off up the steps, dragging Piqué behind her.  
     _Cowards!_   Aria grimaced wryly.  She turned toward the girl who’d spoken, trying not to stare at the impressive paint job that made her look like white marble.  
     The girl gestured at the other two and they put her down, turning away to strike their own poses in what seemed to be a mimicry of Greek statuary.  “You know Mytho, don’t you Duck?” she spoke, getting right down to the point.  
     Aria hesitated.  “Well… yes.”  
     The girl beamed at her, “Can you introduce him to us?”  
     She stared blankly at the girl.  _Is she some kind of fan or something?_   “Why?”  
     The girl laughed, “Not for what you’re thinking,” she waved away Aria’s hesitance.  “See, we’re looking for a boy to dance ballet for us in the summer showcase.”  
     Aria’s eyes tracked over the statue-like students, “I thought the headmaster said the drama club wasn’t putting on Wagner’s—”  
     The girl frowned, creasing her face paint.  “Well no, he’s made it very clear there isn’t enough room in the program for our _first_ choice, so we had to change it.  We’ve got an original piece, only eighteen minutes long, but it’s an opéra-ballet so we need a dancer.  Mr. Catt refused our request to post the role in the dance department—” she rolled her eyes, “—but if we could get a senior student to volunteer, the headmaster would have to give us a performance spot.”  
     “Uh…” her logic _seemed_ sound.  Maybe.  
     “You know,” the girl grinned ingratiatingly, “a little star power to give us some clout.  So what do you say, could you introduce us?”  
     Aria fidgeted.  “I don’t think that’s a great idea,” she murmured, thinking of Mytho and the raven’s blood.  Twice now she’d saved someone from having their heart ripped out by the raven prince.  She saw a flash in her mind of this girl in her white marble paint being held aloft on the dark altar and she shuddered.  
     The girl’s features fell, “Oh, I see.”  
     “I mean it’s just that he’s really busy with dancing Albrecht, you know?” Aria jumped in quickly.  “It’s a lot of work preparing for a role like that, and he doesn’t have a whole lot of time.  That’s the problem with all of the senior ballet students, they’ve already got roles in the main production and they’ve been practicing for weeks, almost every spare hour of the day, so it’s really hard to take on a side project like this.”  She was aware of herself babbling, but couldn’t seem to stop.  “I mean, it’s a really good idea otherwise, but not with Mytho, you know?  Fakhir’s the only senior student who isn’t slotted for a role in the showcase, and that’s only because he got suspended, although he really shouldn’t have been because he didn’t actually do anything wrong.  I know, because I was there, but it’s not like anyone believes anything I say because I’m just Duck, and…” she trailed off.  _And nobody wants to listen to me babble._  
     The girl was frowning now, deep creases carved into her face like stone.  “Do you think Fakhir would do it?” she ventured hesitantly.  
     “Oh!” Aria’s eyes went wide.  
     “He’s kind of scary,” one of the other girls broke her statue pose to join them, looking worried.  
     “Isn’t he the guy who pushes people out of windows?” the other girl asked, breaking her own pose to voice her protest.  
     Aria looked around at the trio painted to look like marble, white powder puffing out of their clothes with every move like tiny clouds escaping.  It looked like she was standing here talking to the statuary.  This may be the most bizarre conversation she’d ever had.  “That’s a lie,” she said weakly, speaking up in Fakhir’s defense.  “And he’s just as good—well better really—at ballet than Mytho.  He was cast as Hilarion in Giselle before he was suspended.”  
     “That is true,” the first girl mused, her eyes focused and her expression determined.  “As it stands, we could really use Fakhir… and really, considering the role, he might just be perfect fort he part.”  She gestured imperiously to one of the girls beside her, “Get me a script.”  
     The girl looked like she wanted to object, but after a moment she nodded weakly and scampered off toward the bushes at the edge of the walk where Aria could see a bunch of school bags had been hastily shoved.  
     “I’m Elfriede,” the girl introduced herself, “president of the drama club, and this,” she accepted the hurriedly retrieved script from the puffing drama club member with one hand and passed it over to Aria without breaking stride, “—is a script of our production.  We’d be grateful to you if you could give this to Fakhir for us when you see him.”  
     It wasn’t really a request, more like an order.  But Aria smiled anyway and took the script, “Of course I will, thank you!”

***

     He wasn’t sure what he expected on his first day back from his suspension, but as Fakhir crossed the bridge spanning the canal amidst the huddles of students casting him looks and exchanging quiet whispers with each other, he suppressed a sigh and realized this was _exactly_ what he should have suspected.  He’d have to watch himself today, certain that every move would be scrutinized by Gold Crown’s citizenry, and reported on the grapevine in the most scandalous light that could be contrived.  He hated having to navigate the murky waters of Gold Crown’s so-called social scene, but his return was tenuous at best—as emphasized by Headmaster Heigl.  His suspension could be reinstated at any time, a term made short only by the loud and, he had to assume, unbearable protests of Heigl’s daughter Heidi at the loss of her pas de deux partner.  Insufferable though the girl may be, Fakhir had to be grateful to her for that at least.  He didn’t like being away for even as long as he had.  He’d missed too much already.  
     Though he’d timed his return to school for a period when few students should have been around, it was apparent by the huddled crowds that his appearance was anticipated.  Head held high, Fakhir did his best to ignore them.  An even larger crowd than the smattering of loiterers on the bridge awaited him in the foyer of the administrative building.  Gaggles of girls had gathered to witness his inglorious return.  And it was immediately evident why, for at their center standing alone directly in Fakhir’s path, was Mytho.  
     He halted, facing the prince warily.  
     Mytho smiled, the expression too easy on his face.  Too smooth, too practiced.  _Too wrong._   “Hello,” he greeted warmly, and that was wrong too.  Everything about _this_ Mytho was wrong.  It was the prince and it wasn’t.  It was a stranger wearing his best friend’s face.  “I’m so glad you’ve come back to school Fakhir.”  He held his arms out at his sides in an open gesture of welcome, slowly approaching Fakhir as if he really _was_ happy to greet him.  
     Fakhir recognized his act for what it was.  _One enemy greeting another._ And wasn’t that twisted up?  They shouldn’t be enemies.  They should be fighting the raven together, side by side.  Except the raven’s blood was in Mytho’s veins now, and the enemy he really had to fight was within himself.  And Fakhir didn’t know how to aid him in that battle.  Which made him useless.  
     “I’ve been waiting for you,” Mytho murmured, walking right up to Fakhir and embracing him.  
     Fakhir didn’t move, didn’t even twitch.  His body remained tense, ready to feel the fatal blow of the knife in his back.  Ready to fight.  
     The prince’s words were harsh as he whispered where no one could hear, “Why did you come back?”  
     “I am here to protect Mytho,” he told the stranger before him.  “That is all.”  
     “Protect?” Mytho laughed softly.  “How?  You’re a knight who couldn’t even find the strength to die.  What can you do?”  Mytho pulled away, studying him with an expression of delighted amusement.  “The knight’s role in the story was to be torn in two and die, but not only were you saved in that unseemly way, you’ve got the nerve to _still_ be alive.  The story no longer has need of you.  Now you’ll just fade away and be forgotten.”  
     Sharper than a knife, those words cut through Fakhir’s armor.  He showed no reaction however, facing this _thing_ before him without blinking.  
     After a moment, Mytho sneered.  “Welcome back, Fakhir,” he announced loudly with a dismissive pat upon Fakhir’s shoulder.  “It’s good to see you.”  Turning away, his performance complete, the stranger in Mytho’s skin strode away.  
     Whispers erupted around him, but Fakhir stood frozen for several long seconds, shaken by the encounter.  Only when the cold had washed out of his bones was he able to move forward again, pressing on through the gossiping crowd to the relief of the sunlight beyond the foyer’s shadow.  He turned toward Noverre Hall to report to the headmaster, and was almost relieved to see Aria hurrying toward him.  _Hell._ And didn’t that just underscore how upside down his life had become when hers was the only friendly face he’d seen so far?  
     “Good morning Fakhir!” she sang out, heedless of decorum or the insidious stares and whispers that seemed to surround him.  For once her clothes looked pressed and ironed, her hair neatly plaited in a long, thick rope down her back, though a few stray curls frizzed out around her face.  And, he noticed with a small smile, she had a smear of some kind of white powder on her nose.  
     He arched a brow at her, “This is early for you.”  
     Color flooded her face, lending her cheeks a rosy stain that wasn’t nearly as unflattering as her expression of discomfort seemed to suggest.  “Piqué bought me an alarm clock.  She set the thing and I have no idea how to change it or turn it off.”  
     He fought back the urge to laugh.  
     Anyway,” she held out an amateurly bound book she was hugging to her chest.  “Do you like plays, Fakhir?  Ballet is dancing, but there’s stories and stuff too, you know, so it’s kind of like a play, so…”  
     She was babbling so she was clearly nervous which meant she probably had something to ask him.  “Spit it out,” he sighed.  
     “Well…” she trailed off and blew out a breath, causing one stray curl to go dancing across her forehead.  Then with her eyes closed she plunged on, “The drama students wanted to ask you to dance in a play they’re putting on for the summer showcase and I promised them I’d ask you, so here’s the script.”  
     He blinked at her, surprised she’d gotten that all out in one breath, and the span of a second.  Then his eyes fell to the script and his stomach twisted.  The silhouette of a knight was drawn expertly on the cover.  He recognized it.  He’d seen it twice last night.  _Once in a dream, and once on a spectral horse._  
     Seeming to take his silence as censure, Aria wilted a little.  “I know you’re not dancing the role of Hilarion any longer, and that means you have less reason to be around school after classes, but I think it’s important for one or both of us to stick close to Mytho as much as we can so…” her voice trailed off again, the worried look in her eyes finishing her thought without the need of words.  
_So we can stop him if he tries to do something terrible._  
     He sighed and took the script from her, hoping she didn’t notice his hand shaking.  “You probably have a point.”  
     “Good!” she beamed at him.  “I’ll see you in practice later,” and then she dashed off as if she were late for something.  Which, he realized, was her default.  
     He looked again at the script and grimaced before tucking it under his arm.  If he didn’t hurry he’d be late for the headmaster, and the last thing he wanted to do was screw up on his first day back.  When he arrived at the headmaster’s office, Mr. Catt was already there, and he hesitated at the threshold.  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, “I’ll come back.”  
     “No need, Mr. Suziere,” Headmaster Heigl stood from his desk and gestured him in.  “We’re almost done here.”  
     Fakhir tossed a look at Mr. Catt before walking up to the desk.   
     The headmaster retrieved a paper and held it out to him.  “A schedule of your final exams, since your suspension caused you to miss some of the original sessions.  I expect perfect marks on all of them, Mr. Suziere.”  
     “Of course,” he acquiesced through clenched teeth.  _As if he’d had anything less than perfect marks on any exam ever._  
     The headmaster cast a dark look at Mr. Catt.  “I’ve got a board meeting I’m late for, I trust the two of you can see yourselves out.”  With that he lifted a briefcase and left the office through a side door.  
     Mr. Catt blew out an angry breath, “I don’t like that man,” he muttered.  It was clear Fakhir wasn’t supposed to hear him.  
     Without a word, Fakhir started to turn away.  
     “Mr. Suziere?”  
     He sighed and turned back, “Mr. Catt?”  
     The instructor took a step toward him, his arms crossed over his chest.  “Bad blood between people eventually goes away.”  He jerked his head in the direction Headmaster Heigl had gone, “With some it takes longer than others.  I am sorry we had to cut you from Giselle, given the suspension but,” His eyes dropped to the script still tucked under Fakhir’s arm.  “Oh, are you doing a drama production?”  
     Fakhir glanced down at it as well.  “I guess.”  
     Mr. Catt nodded thoughtfully.  “I’ll admit I was displeased with their antics this morning, but Heigl has overridden my objections.  Now I feel better about it.  I’m glad you’ll be getting to display your skills at the showcase, it would have been a grave error to not have one of our finest students on stage that day.”  With that cryptic statement, he brushed past Fakhir for the door.  
     On impulse, Fakhir called after him.  “Mr. Catt, wait.”  
     “Yes, Mr. Suziere?” the instructor turned toward him with an arched brow that clearly said, _do not waste my time._  
     “Do you think it’s possible to restore a love that’s been made impure?”  
     The instructor’s expression turned thoughtful as he considered the question.  “You raise a rather thorny issue.  What is it that defines an impure love?”  
     Fakhir frowned.  “Huh?”  
     “After all, who can say that Odile’s love is impure?”  
     Fakhir narrowed a look at him, “What do you mean?”  
     But the instructor didn’t elaborate.  He merely shrugged and walked away.  
     Unsettled, Fakhir took the script he held and opened it, flipping through the first few pages.  Ice water ran through his veins when he recognized the story.  His heart began to pound.  This wasn’t just some random drama club script.  
     This was one of Drosselmeyer’s tales.  
     “Right,” he fumed, slamming the script closed and turning on his heels.  _It was time to find some damn answers around here._

 

     Fakhir found Aria later that afternoon lurking around in the dusty corridor outside the room where the drama club met after classes.  She was peeking around the corner of a door, calling hello into a room.  Her own voice echoed out behind her just before she crept inside.  He followed after her as she called again.  
     “Is anybody here?” her voice echoed eerily into the corridor as he rounded the door jamb.  “Maybe they’re all—” she stepped fully into the room.  “Not here.”  
     Peering past her, Fakhir could see that the room beyond was empty as a freshly dug grave except for the clutter crowding almost every spare square inch of floorspace.  This _is where the drama club meets?_ he wondered.  Surely it couldn’t be the right place.  He checked the hastily scrawled time and room number on the script he held and saw that it was.  “Hey,” he greeted her.  
     She made a high-pitched squeaking sound as she jumped two feet in the air and spun, clapping both hands over her mouth.  Her eyes were wide with shock and terror, but when she recognized him, thunderclouds rolled across her face.  
     He quirked a brow at her, “Bit of an extreme reaction, isn’t it?”  
     “Don’t do that!” she swore at him angrily.  
     His eyebrows soared higher.  “You were expecting me, right?”  
     She punched him in the arm, the blow surprisingly well executed, and swore again.  “I didn’t know if you’d come or not, idiot!”  
     His eyes swept around the room again, noting the far window covered in dust, and the boxes piled high in stacks creating a labyrinth of what was otherwise a good-sized room.  There was an inexplicable giant pink elephant’s head perched atop one of the taller stacks, and he narrowed his eyes at it.  _Probably not supposed to mention that._ Then he turned his narrowed eyes on the girl and held up the script that had haunted him all day.  He’d devoured the pages between classes, reading and rereading every word three times.  “Would you mind telling me where the rest of this script is?”  
     She glanced at it, surprise cutting across her face.  “What do you mean the rest?  That’s all there is.”  
     Chills crept down his spine.  “The script cuts off right in the middle.”  
     “It cuts off?” she asked, brow knotted.  
     His eyes widened, then narrowed again.  He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, forcing back a wave of irritation.  “So what you’re telling me is that you dumped a script you haven’t even read on me?”  
     Aria shrugged, “Well everyone said the part was totally perfect for you.”  
     He dropped his hand and gave her a hard look, “A ghost knight is perfect for me, eh?”  
     Her eyes rounded, “It’s about a ghost knight?”  
     Absurdly, amusement began to replace his irritation.  “You do know _how_ to read, don’t you?”  
     “I should have bitten you harder,” she groused back, crossing her arms.  She jerked her chin at the script.  “So what kind of story is it, then?”  
     Quelling the need to return her barb, Fakhir refocused on the script.  “He was hailed as the strongest of knights, enemy nations feared him.  The knight believed his duty was to risk his life to protect his liege.  He even killed his own lover, who was a spy for an enemy kingdom, without faltering.  Eventually the two nations made peace and the knight was cast into exile, and thenceforth knew neither whom to protect or whom to defeat.  He died that way, his soul cursed to wander this world.  That’s where it ends.”  
     Her eyes had gone soft and sad as he spoke.  “That’s kind of tragic,” she murmured.  
     “Oh no, I think it’s a riot.”  
     Fakhir’s head came up and he immediately stepped between Aria and the newcomer, reaching for a weapon he didn’t have.  
     “Rue!” Aria exclaimed, recognizing the girl in the doorway.  
     Rue offered a sultry smile as she plastered herself against the doorframe, somehow making the action look dementedly alluring.  “A wandering knight unable to do anything?  I think the role fits you to a tee, Fakhir.”  She smirked at him and moved on, leaving a haunting laugh in her wake.  
     “Rue, wait!” Aria cried out, trying to push past Fakhir’s outstretched arm.  He held her back as he went for the door and the crow bitch, but Rue was gone when he reached the hallway.  He muttered a vile oath that earned him another hard punch—this one to his back.  He shot Aria an incredulous look.  
     “Language!” she hissed.  
     Before he could wrangle his angry thoughts into the appropriate response to _that_ , someone called out from the opposite end of the corridor.  
     “Duck!”  
     They both turned to see a gaggle of girls descending on them, their leader a tall, willowy brunette who was smiling happily at Aria.  “Wow!  You really did it!” she exclaimed as they marched up.  Her eyes swept appreciatively over Fakhir and he caught himself edging away.   
     Aria noticed and threw him a strange look.  “Hey, Elfriede, we were wondering, where’s the rest of the script?” she asked when it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything.  
     Fakhir was too busy taking a head count of the group and realizing that he was the only male in the room.  And his exit was effectively cut off.  
     Elfriede stepped past them toward a cupboard.  She pulled a key out of her shirt, hung suspended on a ribbon around her neck, and opened the locked doors.  Reaching inside, she almost delicately lifted out a worn and yellowed manuscript.  “This is the original,” she explained almost reverently.  
     “I found it!” a chubby little blonde stepped forward excitedly.  “It was in an old carpet bag hidden behind some boxes in here!”  She smiled at him, all dimples and blushes.  “I’m Adelind,” she introduced herself.  “I don’t believe anything they’ve been saying about you.”  
     “Me either,” another voice broke out from the back of the group.  
     “Or me!”  
     Elfriede silenced the sudden outcry of support with a tolerant gesture, and beamed at Fakhir.  “It is hard to believe all the nasty rumors now.  We never thought you’d actually show up, but here you are!  I can’t tell you how grateful we are that you’re doing this for us.”  
     “Uh,” he rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, “I—”  
     “It’s going to be such a success!” Adelind immediately gushed.  “Now that we have you, Fakhir.  And all the buzz around town about a ghost knight?  I mean obviously it’s just a weird coincidence that I found that script and then people started seeing a phantom riding around, but it makes for good advertising, right?”  
     His eyes fell to the yellowed manuscript held in Elfriede’s hands.  _Coincidence?_   In this town?  Unlikely.  He itched to take the script from her, to touch those brittle pages for himself.  Yet just as he was reaching for it, Elfriede turned and locked it back away.  
     “We’re all excited to get started on this, we only have a few days to put the piece together,” Elfriede was saying as she locked the cupboard and turned back to him, her face flushed with excitement.  “You’ve made the whole thing possible, Fakhir.”  
     Edginess skittered through his veins and he was once again aware of being the only male in this room.  “All I have to do is dance the role of the knight, correct?” he asked.  _Because if they wanted him to sing, or act, or any other damn thing…_  
     “Of course!” she affirmed happily.  “We’ll have everything else covered.”  She hesitated, “So you’ll really do it?”  
     Silence.  
     “Of course he will!” Aria answered for him, hitting him with the sharp edge of her elbow.  
     He glared down at her, then glanced back at Elfriede.  Dread pooled in his gut, but… his eyes went to the locked cupboard.  “Yeah,” he said, “I will.”


	10. Märchen von einem, der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen

**_The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was_ **

 

     “Get everyone behind the wards!”  
     Movement filled the gory square, women and children arrayed in battle and covered in blood were directing a concerted effort to move the surviving, shell-shocked residents of the city into the last remaining safety.  Several stood at the edge of the ward, helping those in who lacked sufficient power to cross the barrier.  Towering over the square, the King’s Cathedral cast its shadow over the broken, feathered bodies that had been shifted beyond the shimmering wave of light that marked the edge of that safety.  More bodies had been dragged inside and covered with sheets, the wounded and the dead alike.  A woman stood on the steps of the cathedral, her long grey dress whipping around her legs, the material clinging to her body as the steady rain slowly soaked her through.  Her palms were raised to the sky, her eyes blank and unfocused as she held the shimmering shield in place.  Her selfless devotion was all that kept the broken ward erect over the square.  If it fell, so would she.   
     Mytho blinked.  
 _The dream again.  
_      He recognized it now, the town that wasn’t the town, the world that seemed so familiar and yet was wholly alien.  He looked around and saw the line of people behind him, streaming from the broken wards of the palace, weary from the battle.  One of the soldiers he’d sent into the town trotted up, one lens of his round spectacles cracked from the fight.  Mytho struggled for the young man’s name, but the word remained elusive.  
     “Sire,” the soldier tipped his head in a quick show of respect.  “Scouts have spotted a second flock approaching from the south.”  
     Exhaustion flooded his system.  If it weren’t for the girl beside him, his arm pulled over her shoulders, he wasn’t sure he would have made the long walk from the palace to here.  Nor was he sure he would have survived the last battle.  He had no strength left for the next.  “How long?” he asked.  
     “Twenty minutes at most.”  
     A _pop_ sounded, and beside him the girl cringed with a low cry of pain.  Her gaze went to the sky, her face pale and eyes wide with terror.  Weariness lined her features as well.  He had no concept of how much power it would have taken to lift an entire river.  He couldn’t even comprehend having enough power to achieve the feat at all… let alone surviving the exertion.  But she’d done it.  “The primary ward has failed,” she gasped in horror.  
     Mytho glanced skyward and saw that she was right.  The town’s protection had fallen, everyone outside the wards were sitting ducks for the incoming attack.  Acid churned in his stomach.   _She wasn’t supposed to be like us,_ he thought.  Mytho shook his head, trying to chase that down, but the knowledge slipped away.  Memory and fantasy pulsed around him.  _This isn’t real, is it?_   Or was it?  He shook his head, trying to shake away the certainty, the uncertainty… all of it.  But he couldn’t deny the feeling, the gut-jerking, bone-deep instinct that raged against the very thought of the girl possessing such depth of power.  And that same instinct wanted to deny what his own eyes had seen, what he somehow knew not knowing how he knew, he had suspected for years:  that she was far, far more than he had feared.  The thought of what that meant—though he could not recollect the consequence—sent icy chills surging through his veins.  
     Mytho sighed.  He’d have to deal with that later, right now he had a battle to prepare for.  _Another battle._   Unwinding his arm from the girl’s shoulders, he faced the young soldier.  “Where’s Otto?”  
     The young man flinched, his eyes darting toward the church.   
     Mytho followed the direction of his gaze and saw the sheet-covered bodies on the steps waiting to be moved.  A woman hunched over one, her pale face soaked in tears.  She looked up at him over the fallen soldier with blank eyes, an expression of such heart-rending loneliness that it cut him to the quick.  
     Sorrow stabbed him, and he looked past the young man toward the doors of the church where the survivors crowded now.  Dozens of faces turned toward him, sharing the same blank expressions of horror.  _All I’ve made are widows and orphans.  
_      He swallowed past the taste of bile and turned toward his knight, “Pars—”  
     But the knight was focused on something else.  
     Mytho turned to see a woman racing toward the square from the south, her skirts flying wildly behind her.  Around him, the soldiers that had gathered near all tensed.  The woman breached the barrier as if it wasn’t there.  And again, Mytho knew without remembering how, that this marked her as one of the blood.  Yet he did not recognize her.  
     His knight did.  
     “Connie,” he breathed, taking a step toward her as she raced up to their battle-weary group.   
     She fell to her knees before Mytho.  “Sire,” she begged.  “I must speak with you now.”  
     Shock and questions chased themselves over his knight’s face.  
     Mytho looked from the woman to his knight and back again in bafflement, too tired to work out what was going on.  
     The woman wrung her hands, anxiety pouring off her in almost palpable waves.  Her eyes went to the crowd, the girl at his side, the soldiers at his back.  “Please sire,” she begged, “w-without the others.”  
     He looked to his knight, “Parsifal?”  
     The man was tense, his shoulders tight, his mouth set in an unhappy line, but he nodded.  
     “Go to the church,” Mytho murmured to the girl.  She gave him a strange look, then with the soldiers, ascended the stairs of the cathedral.  Mytho noticed that she withdrew far enough not to hear, but she sat down on the stairs beside a black-haired boy where she could still see.  He turned back to the woman.  
     Bending, his knight grasped her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet.  “What is this all about?” he demanded.  
     She shot him a nervous look, “I—”  
     “No,” he shook his head.  “I’m not leaving.  Whatever you have to say to the prince you’ll say to me too.”  
     Her jaw snapped shut and tears filled her eyes, then she turned to Mytho.  “Sire, I know where to find the raven.”  
     All the air was sucked from his lungs as if he’d been punched.  “Excuse me?”  
     His knight was less diplomatic.  “Explain,” he snarled.  
     Misery crumpled her face, “You know him as von Rothbart.”  
     Mytho’s body staggered back with the revelation, though his broken mind failed to comprehend its significance.  
     “How long have you known this?” his knight asked darkly.  
     The woman’s eyes cut to the ground, “I’ve always known.”  
     The man swore.  “You—” he broke off into a stream of curses, his face mottling with rage.  Mytho felt the same fury, but his was silent.  The knight grabbed the woman, both his hands wrapped around her arms.  “Do you have any idea what he’s done?” he demanded in a low and terrible voice.  “The death?  The suffering?  The inhumanity?”   
     “Parsifal,” Mytho stepped in, laying a hand upon the knight’s arm in admonishment.  Whatever was going on, surely they needed explanation, not emotional outburst.  
     The knight swore again, tossing the woman aside.  She staggered before catching her balance.  He turned and paced a step away then turned back.  Ripping the arm band from the uniform he wore, he threw it at her feet.  It lay there, awful in its significance.  Black on white surrounded by red.  _White on red surrounded by black._    
     Mytho blinked, shaking away the image of the girl kneeling on frozen water.  _What the…  
_      “You lied to me!” the knight hissed.  
     “No!” she cried out, tears spilling down her cheeks.  “I didn’t have a choice, P—”  
     “Wait,” even Mytho flinched at the authority in his own voice.  “What is going on here?  Who is this woman to you?”  
     Sneering at her, his knight pulled away.  “Nobody,” he growled.  
     Hurt filled her face.  “How can you say that?”  
     Rounding back on the woman with such violence Mytho felt compelled to step between them, his knight surged forward.  “You are no better than the enemy!” he hissed.  “You’ve seen the horrors committed in the name of the raven, you’ve known the price and suffering, yet you’ve said nothing!”  
     “I couldn’t!” she wailed, “Don’t you understand?  He would have killed me!  He would have killed—” she broke off, pressing one shaking hand to her mouth.  Her eyes went to Mytho.  “There was nothing you could have done then, sire.  I didn’t know how to stop him then.  But I know now!  That’s why I came to you!”  
     “Liar!” the knight roared.  
     Voices raised in concern around them.  
     “Calm,” Mytho cautioned, trying and failing to hold the warrior at bay.  
     “Pierce!” the woman cried out, choking on her sobs.  “I’m sorry, please, I didn’t—”  
     “Treacherous bitch!”  Getting past Mytho’s guard, his knight charged forward and struck the woman a heavy backhand that knocked her to her knees on the church steps.  
     “Enough!” Mytho swore.  His fist connected with the knight’s jaw, and the man joined her on the cold stone.  With burning eyes, he glared down at both of them.  “Who is this woman to you?” he demanded.  
     The knight turned cold eyes on him and cursed.  “She is—” he cast a glare at her, “ _was—_ my wife.”  
     Shock struck him dumb, and Mytho could only stare at his friend in disbelief.  _Wife?_   Somewhere… maybe a thousand miles away, maybe right beside him… a sharp scream split the air and splintered straight into his soul.

 

     Mytho woke with a cry as agony exploded in his chest.  He whimpered, trying to hold the pain in place with his fist against his heart.  It burned right through him, burned up everything inside him.  Everything that was _him._   He closed his eyes tight, trying to draw the dream back, trying to return to that strange _before._   Trying to change the ending.  
 _“Oh there’s no changing it now, my prince,”_ his dark antagonist taunted in his mind.     _“Do you like remembering?”  
_      “No,” he moaned, rolling to his side and curling into a tight ball.  “Make it stop, please!”  
 _“Oh no, my prince.  Not yet.  I’ve only just begun to have fun.”  
_      “Why?” he hissed, panting through the torment.  “Why make me remember that?”  
     Laughter echoed in his head.  _“Because, dear prince.  He’s back.”_

***

     “Father?”  Rue called out into the darkness, holding up the bowl she’d filled with fresh water.  “Would you like to slake your thirst?”  
     Red eyes glowed from out of the shadows.  They fixed on her, narrowing evilly at her offering.  Wide wings flared and filled the night, striking forward.  The bowl was tossed from her hands and then she was thrown.  Rue’s cheek cracked against the broken tiles of the ruin.  “I want no paltry water, girl!  I crave the taste of blood.  Where is the heart?”  
     Shaking in the face of his fury, Rue quickly backpedaled away.  She had one hand pressed to her cheek, horrified to feel hot wetness there.  “I’m so sorry, father,” she sobbed.  “I tried to capture you a sacrifice in the prince’s place, but—”  
     “ _You_ did?” incredulity dripped from the raven’s guttural growl.  
     Her quaking limbs shook harder.  “Yes, but father—”  
     “What a waste!” the raven scoffed.  “You will not be loved by anyone but me and the prince in the story!  Do you understand me, daughter?  And there is _no_ way that you will ever be loved so much that someone would forfeit his own life for you.  Remember that well.”  
     Tears burned her eyes, spilling down her cheeks, and she hung her head in shame.  “Yes father.”  
     The raven moved closer, his silhouette huge in the shadows.  “If you stand in the prince’s way again,” his voice had dropped, soft with warning, “you will lose even my love.”  
     Rue’s heart pounded in her chest.  “I’m sorry!” she cried, flinging herself at the creature’s feet.  “Please,” she groveled, “forgive me father.  I’ll do things right next time.”  
     One wing fanned out.  Black feathers brushed over her hair in a mockery of gentleness.  “You had better, my daughter.  You have been warned.”

***

     For once, Aria was staying late after class for something other than detention.  Although classes let out early on Thursday for the weekend’s showcase preparations, so she wasn’t _really_ staying late.  Or not really any later than usual.  She shook her head and reached into Piqué’s bag, pulling out a soft white sweater.  “Can I borrow this?” she asked.  
     “Sure,” Piqué shrugged, chugging down the last of the bottle of water she was sucking on.  “But aren’t you going to change?  We’re done for the day.”  
     Done for the weekend, actually.  The showcase started tomorrow.  “I’m staying back, the drama club is practicing their production up here in a little while.”  
     Piqué grinned, “Tell me you didn’t join the drama club.”  
     Aria rolled her eyes, “I didn’t.  I just helped them out a little, and I’m curious to see what they’re putting together, that’s all.”  
     “Then here,” Lillie reached into her own bag and pulled out a white wrap-around skirt.  “Borrow this too.  That way you don’t have to hang out in your tights the whole time.”  
     “Thanks,” Aria told her gratefully.  Unlike the other girls she didn’t have cover ups.  Piqué and Lillie usually kept her supplied.  
     “Any time,” Lillie grinned back.  
     Piqué hefted her bag and turned to Lillie, “Pizza?”  
     “Ugh,” she clenched her hands over her stomach, “No, I won’t be able to fit into my Giselle costume if I do.”  
     “Come on,” Piqué looped an arm around her fellow corps de blanc mate, “They have salad there.”  
     Lillie sighed and allowed herself to be dragged from the room.  
     Aria pulled on the sweater and tied Lillie’s skirt around her waist as the other girls filed out.  She’d just finished unpinning her bun and was running her fingers through the damp curls at the nape of her neck when the studio door opened and Fakhir strode in.  He was still in his dance clothes too, a blue button-down shirt worn loosely over his black dance attire, its ends tied together to keep them out of the way.  
     He looked around at the empty studio, “The others aren’t here yet?”  
     She rolled her eyes, “Well most of them have a longer walk than a single staircase.”  
     Fakhir huffed, “You’ve gotten sassy.”  
     Aria chose not to retort, her hands busy as she wound her hair into a loose braid.  By the time she was finished, the door opened again to admit the bulk of the drama club’s girls.  
     Elfriede beamed at them across the room.  “Duck!  Fakhir!  I’m so glad you made it!”  
     Fakhir grumbled something under his breath. But Aria smiled back.  “Hey guys!”  
     Elfriede looked around at the mostly empty studio then and frowned.  “We asked Annette to dance the part of the lady knight since she was cut from the corps de blanc…” she frowned, “but she won’t be able to join us until she gets out of her after school counseling session.  I was really hoping we could run through all the choreography before we have to give up the studio so I can get a feel for how the opera pieces will fit in, but—”  
     “Aria can dance it,” Fakhir announced.  
     “Who?” Elfriede asked.  
     At the same time Aria exclaimed, “What!?”  
     Fakhir shrugged in her direction and tossed his bag against the wall after extricating the script from it.  He flipped a few pages and held it out to her, “Most of the choreography was drafted, we can put it together easily enough.”  
     Her eyes bugged as she stared at him, surging to her feet in protest.  
     “…it would help me get a feel for what we’re aiming at visually so we can work the other components together,” Elfriede ventured.  
     Aria stepped closer to Fakhir, ignoring the script he still held.  “You know I can’t do this!” she hissed at him.  “I’m the worst dancer at this school!”  
     He leaned closer, “Wasn’t it _you_ who danced with the prince in St. Godfrey’s square?” he asked.  She glared at him even as he pressed the script into her hands.  Fakhir’s voice dropped, “Consider it payback for manipulating me into this.”  
     Aria seethed.  Yanking the script from his hands she flipped through it. True, someone—whoever had designed the production—had roughly sketched the overall idea of what the ballet would look like.  The knight’s grand pas de deux was the central piece of the number, around which the operatic and narrative pieces revolved.  And it was also true that as Tutu she’d utilized all of the various jumps and turns highlighted in the choreography at one point or another.  And theoretically she knew all the mimes.  But that was as _Tutu._ Then again…  
 _It was_ me _who danced for the prince’s heart on the lake.  
_      Aria sucked in a breath.  “Fine,” she huffed.  
     Fakhir’s lips quirked and he eyed her flats.  “You’ll need your pointe shoes.”  
     Grumbling, Aria stomped over to her bag and yanked off Piqué’s sweater.  She fished out her pointe shoes and laced them on, irritation sharpening her movements into short jerks so it took twice as long as usual to get the ribbons wrapped right and tied around her ankles.  She stomped back over to Fakhir—noting that nothing stomps better than a pointe shoe.  “Are you happy now?” she demanded.   
     Fakhir’s eyes danced.  If she didn’t know better, Aria would have thought he was _entertained._   He turned to Elfriede, “You have the music?”  
     “Here!” Adelind exclaimed, bouncing over to the gramophone and laying a record on the turntable.   
     Fakhir held a hand out to Aria as the music began.  “Relax,” he murmured.  “It’s not like we’ve never danced together before.”  
     “Yeah, but the last time we danced together, you dropped me,” she reminded him, whispering through clenched teeth.  She could have sworn she saw him smirk before he moved onto his mark.  _Really reassuring.  
_      As the gramophone came to life, a lyrical, sad, and vaguely familiar tune filled the studio.  “Since we don’t really have the resources or the time to come up with a whole symphonic score,” Elfriede spoke over the gramophone, “We worked the lyrics up to fit around an old English tune.”  She frowned at Fakhir, “Do you think it will work?”  
     He listened to it for a beat, “You’ll have musicians on the day?”  
     “Oh yes, Katharina and Linda both play the violin, and Kat’s brother Vafi is going to provide percussion.”  
     Fakhir shrugged, “It’ll work.”  He stepped out into the middle of the floor and was still for a moment, listening to the sad waltz emanating from the far side of the room.  His expression morphed into one of studious concentration and Aria was reminded that he _was_ the premier danseur of the academy for a reason.  She was also reminded of the last time she’d seen him dance, the raw violence and bleeding beauty of his style.  
     Today was different.  Fakhir spread his arms and stepped into the first slow movements, gracefully piecing together the roughly sketched choreography into a stern and stately description of the story’s knight.  Somehow, he communicated power in the first conservative steps, and then leaping into a pas de ciseaux, bled impending violence into the dance. For a moment she just stood there, watching him move through his opening foray, in awe of the powerful grace he wielded with exquisite ease.   
     Behind her she heard the whispers of the drama girls.  _“It’s kind of scary.”  
_ _“But really good.”  
_ _“It’s as if he were the real ghost knight.”  
_      Then Fakhir pirouetted toward the waiting “squire” who held in her shaking hands a prop sword.  He took the sword, playacting a one-sided battle.  Except it wasn’t playacting.  Aria had seen him do this before.  Chills raced down her spine as the memory flashed in her mind:  Fakhir facing down an army of crow warriors on the seemingly frozen surface of a lake, on a broken stage, in an empty church…  He really _was_ the knight of the story.  
     “That’s your cue!” Elfriede whispered loudly behind Aria.  
     Startled out of her reverie, realizing she was already a beat behind, Aria stumbled forward and tripped over her own feet.  She rushed clumsily forward and fell to her knees.

***

_Tension moved through the group of soldiers like a wave as the knight stepped forward, a breathless woman falling to her knees at his feet.  
_      Fakhir blinked at the image that lit up his mind with the brightness of a camera flash, leaving behind almost the negative of the scene frozen in black and white in his head.  _What the hell?  
_      Back on step, Aria rose to her feet in a close semblance of grace.  Her hands sketched through the air as she stepped back, dropping into a low fourth position with her clasped hands upraised in the mime for _please._   Then straightening, she dropped her hands to her waist, one crossed over the other before spreading her arms wide with her hands palm down at the level of her hips, each movement more confident than the last.  She drew her left hand back toward her right hip before casting it wide to her side again, palm up.  _Don’t go.  
_      Fakhir blinked again as more camera flashes went off in his head, sparks like electricity sizzling across his skin as if lightning burned in his veins.  He saw the woman again, a different scene, a different place.  _Before the end._ She pleaded with the knight to stay.   
     He shook his head as if to clear it.  The music was a rushing roar in his ears as he moved woodenly in the response of the dance, spreading his arms in the almost universal _why?  
_      The look Aria shot him had no place in the choreography, full of frustration.  He could almost see her trying to remember how to put the next pieces together.  His amusement nearly broke the strange spell that had settled like a pall over him as he watched her raise her right hand high before her, palm facing their increasingly intrigued audience, gently closing her fingers and slightly turning her wrist until only her index finger remained up.  Dropping her upraised hand, she held it toward him.  Then with her left hand drew again the mime for _go_ before raising both hands in a narrow Y over her head, eyes on her upraised hands.  
     Fakhir felt his stomach drop as Aria closed her fingers into fists crossed at the wrist over her head, and dropped her crossed fists low.   
 _If you go, you will die.  
_      Another flash in his mind, as if he was watching this very conversation occur in a different time and a different place.  Rattled by his own reactions, he hurried through the next steps, his hands rushing through the mimes.  He could feel the meaning of the movements down to his bones, and it ached.  _They can’t kill me._ A whisper in his mind curled rebelliously around his sanity.  _But they did kill him, didn’t they?_ The taste of bile flooded his mouth.  
     Aria was before him again, but her face was almost a blur, another image superimposed upon it.  Dark hair instead of red.  Dark eyes instead of blue.  Blurry, indistinct.  She pleaded with him again, hands clasped before her.  _Please don’t go._   Then gesturing to herself she cringed away in the mime of fear.  
     A crack sounded, and Fakhir wasn’t sure if it was on the record or in his mind.  He heard the sound like a fist hitting flesh.  A distant scream.  _Is this the ghost knight trying to speak to me?  Does he want something from me?_      But why him?  And why now?  
     The next moves of the conversation felt like a lie as he lifted his hands into the mimes, speaking in the movements of dance.  _I’ll protect you.  
_      Aria rose up en pointe and Fakhir stepped into the first part of the grand pas de deux, happy that for a moment the conversation part of the dance was over.  As he supported her in a promenade, he tried to rein in his pounding heart.  But the images in his mind didn’t cease.  She stepped away and he followed, the two of them improvising choreography in the moment, and though it looked as though Aria was doing her best to channel her inner Tutu, he was the one who couldn’t keep his mind in the dance.  
     When at last she pulled away, miming again _please don’t go!_ Fakhir was happy for the reprieve.  He leapt into his solo, pouring his rage and frustration, his helplessness and confusion, his pain and his soul into the steps.  He leapt and turned and spun, careless of whether the next step would be the one to land wrong and end his career before it had begun.   
     Then on a swell of the music, Aria threw herself at his feet again.  She pointed away, her arms now seeming to vibrate with the energy of the dance.  He could almost hear the words she mimed to him.  With her right hand she traced an imaginary beard before raising both hands to trace an imaginary crown.  _The wicked king…_ and again she raised her hands into crossed fists… _will kill you.  
_ _Rage and pain on a flash of betrayal wiping the world red.  
_ _“How long have you known this?”  
_ _“I’ve always known.”  
_      Fakhir stumbled back at the force of the vision.  The rushing roar in his ears drowned out every other sound as he shakily gestured for her to go on.  
     Aria’s eyes seemed to fill with tears, but it wasn’t Aria’s eyes that he saw.  She gestured to herself, then tapped both her ears before tracing small circles in front of her lips.  Straightening, she stood tall, her bearing erect with military precision as she traced a sash across her chest, and then with the same hand seemed to count out _one, two, three, ten, fifty, hundreds… many.  
_      Fakhir was pretty sure she’d made that mime up on the spot, but her meaning couldn’t be plainer.  _I heard him speak of many soldiers.  
_      The possession that took hold of his soul in that moment wasn’t his own.  The flash of rage he felt came from some other place, the place where the flashes and visions came from, he was sure.  The ghost knight perhaps?  There was no way to tell.  But he couldn’t stop it.  He couldn’t hold the anger at bay as he gesticulated wildly, giving that fury voice.   
     She clasped her hands before her, and he saw that other face that wasn’t hers now wet with tears.  _Beg mercy.  
_      But there was no mercy.  No place for forgiveness or love in the soul stripped bare with rage.  Fakhir spun away.  The dance took on a new tone, a wilder feel than before.  She tried to approach him, and he cast her aside.  She tried to beg mercy, and he threw the plea back in her face.  His feet felt like they didn’t even touch the floor as he soared and twisted and let violence bleed onto their little stage.  She tried again, and he raised his hands into crossed fists.  She cringed away and the violent tempo some brilliant musician had managed to weave into an old English ballad wavered and thinned.   
     Large eyes looked up at him as Aria sketched the final words of the dance.  _But I love you._  
     The next part would need no translation for the audience.  That same strange rage still pounding in his veins, Fakhir wheeled away and retrieved the sword which had been handed off to his “squire” at the start.  Spinning back, he charged at the girl, and in the capstone of the now frenzied dance, pulled her roughly against him as he seemingly used the sword to run her through.

***

     Breathing hard, the cold metal of the prop sword pressed firmly to her right flank, Aria watched as the previous fury melted out of Fakhir’s eyes as though a veil were being lifted.  He’d danced like one possessed—but then she’d seen him dance that way before.  Now however, he looked truly lost and she wasn’t quite sure if something was wrong or if he was simply a superb actor.  A thousand emotions seemed to chase each other through those eyes, a shade of jade so deep and dark that when he glared it seemed like rainbow obsidian.   
     At that moment Aria realized just how close she was to Fakhir, her body pressed right up against his, their faces inches apart.  Both of them were panting from the exertion of the dance.  The cold blade of the sword he still held seemed to burn through her leotard.  For once Fakhir didn’t look judgmental or fierce, and she was gripped by a strange desire to ease the anguish she could see in his eyes.  It wouldn’t take much effort to reach up and brush her fingertips across the worried creases of his face.  It would take even less to brush her lips against his.  
     She watched his throat work as he swallowed, saw the light in his eyes change.  Her lips parted on their own, and she saw the decision in his eyes.  The distance between them began to close.  
     “And that’s the lady knight’s death scene!” Elfriede cried out, clapping her hands.  “That was wonderful!”  
     Aria and Fakhir broke apart abruptly.  She felt her cheeks flaming and wished wildly that she could cover her face or turn away.  _What the hell was I just thinking?  Did I really want Fakhir to kiss me!?_  
     “Wow Duck,” Elfriede skipped up to her, grasping both her hands enthusiastically.  “Do you want to understudy for the part of the lady knight?  You were amazing.  So honest, so raw!”  
     She wasn’t really sure whether that was a compliment or not, but she offered a wobbly smile on the chance that it was.  
     Elfriede’s answering grin beamed of earnest honesty.  
     “Yeah, and you two dance so well together,” Kat gushed, “it’s like you both just know where the other one is and what they’re going to do.”  The girl was practically jumping up and down.  “And on the first go!”  
     “Well Fakhir’s really good at this,” Aria fumbled.  “I’m just me.”  
     Fakhir was standing apart from them.  He had his aloof on again.  The previous emotion she’d seen in his eyes was wiped away behind an austere mask.  If Aria didn’t know him better, she would have thought he was struggling to compose himself after their near-kiss.  But no.  She was certain now it had all been in her head.   
     “I think I’ve got some ideas for the ghost knight’s last solo,” he spoke up.  
     “Wonderful!” Elfriede enthused, and Aria got the distinct impression that the girl only had two levels:  enthusiastic and really enthusiastic.  “Let’s move on to that one then.”  
     Glad to be out from the center of attention, Aria hurried to the side of the room.  
     “Ugh,” Adelind bemoaned as she fiddled with the gramophone.  “I wish I could stay and see the whole rehearsal.  But I’ve got to get the rest of the equipment.”  She gestured to another girl to take her place at the music.  
     Looking for a quick escape, Aria’s ears perked right up.  “Hey,” she skipped over, “I can do that for you.”  
     Adelind gave her a hopeful look.  “Are you sure?”  
     Throwing a look at Fakhir over her shoulder, feeling again the stormy surge of something much bigger than butterflies in her stomach—German dive-bombers maybe—she snatched the list from Adelind’s outstretched hand.  “Don’t worry,” she gave the girl a nod, “I’ve got this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies, friends, for the long delay in releasing this chapter! I needed an additional technical resource to write it the way I wanted to, so I'm blaming this one on Amazon UK (and my shortsightedness for not ordering the resource sooner) as well as the shipping office in New Jersey where the package languished for unnecessary weeks. However, fear not, though I could not release the chapter on schedule as I wished, I did not stop working on the project, and I'll be doing my best to catch up!


	11. Die Geist Ritter

_**The Ghost Knight** _

 

     The raucous cacophony of crows filled the air like a murderous symphony as Mytho pulled the silver handled brush through the midnight waves of Rue’s hair.  He glanced out the oriel windows to see the birds gathering on the sill, rustling their ebony feathers, peering in with their pretty ruby eyes.  He brushed his free hand down the sleek strands beneath the brush he held.  “Your hair is quite lovely,” he murmured, “It’s just like crow feathers.”  
     Her shoulders stiffened against the chair back before she relaxed.  “Well thank you,” she preened, her fingers playing nervously in her lap.  “So tell me, have you decided on your next sacrifice yet?”  
     Mytho blinked.  _Sacrifice?_   He shook his head, trying to clear it of the fog, but darkness reigned.  He smiled.  “Only the ones who possess young and beautiful hearts are worthy of sacrifice.”         _“Yes,”_ the dark voice in his head exulted.  _“Those hearts filled with pure, beautiful love.  Love so pure, its corruption runs the deepest black, like the feathers of a crow.”  
_     Mytho’s smile twisted and he stroked his hand over Rue’s hair again.  _Black like this._ “I have to take my time, you know.”  
     “Mmm,” she murmured noncommittally, unaware of the silent conversation in his mind.  Her nervousness increased.  
     “Are you getting impatient?” Mytho crooned.  
     Her eyes opened, her shoulders stiffening again.  “There have been some interesting rumors lately.”  
     The unspoken question in her voice made him laugh softly.  “Yes, the ghost knight.”  _My old comrade.  
__“Back for vengeance,”_ the voice in his mind instructed happily.  _“Purest love corrupted with hate.  The perfect kind.”  
_     “Nothing escapes you, does it?” Rue muttered, a note of discontent blending with admiration in her voice.  “Now that your heart’s coming back.”  She angled her neck to look at him over her shoulder.  “Princes need strong knights.  What if you got the famous ghost knight on your side?”  
     “That’s a good idea,” he mused thoughtfully.  “After all, you haven’t been able to do anything…  _Krähe._ ”  
     She winced.  
     Mytho’s hand settled on her shoulder.  “Don’t get angry.  It’s the truth after all, isn’t it?”  
     She opened her mouth, but nothing escaped.  Her eyes met his and she paled.  
     “In any case,” Mytho shrugged, turning her chin away with one hand as he resumed brushing her hair.  “I’ll take your advice, Krähe.  Perhaps the ghost knight can be useful to me.”  
_“Yes,”_ the dark voice gloated.  _“One knight to snuff another.  The boy has become problematic.  He helped thwart the taking of the last heart, he cannot be allowed to interfere again.”_  
     Mytho smiled to himself, darkness gathering and unfurling in his soul, and he hummed as he stroked Rue’s hair with the brush.  Yes, the voice was right.  One knight to snuff another.  After all, the story’s knight was always destined to die.

***

     Sweat-soaked hair clung to his neck as Fakhir whirled in the final, violent steps of the ballet he’d choreographed.  _Why would I dream about the ghost knight?_ The thought whirled through his head in time to the music.  _Why?  
_     Another flash filled his mind.  The sound of screams and shouts and terror.   
_Are these his memories?  Did the ghost knight send me that dream?  Did he send me these visions?_ He dropped to one knee, the sword in his hand flashing as he whirled it expertly around.  _The knight with no place to rest … is he seeking something from me?  
_     Bracing the sword’s pommel against the ground, Fakhir struggled to catch his breath after the violence of his dance.  _But why am_ I _seeing it?  Is it because I’m the knight of the story?  Is that the connection?  
_     In one smooth move, Fakhir threw himself forward as if onto the sharp edge of the sword to die.  Another crash in his mind, an almost painful flash, and then blessed silence.  An eerie calm crept over his soul and he felt his stomach twist.  _Does he want me to put his soul to rest?  
_     Fakhir gasped against the searing agony that split his ribs, as if he could feel the ghost knight’s own pain in his death throes.  Fear flooded his senses.  _Or maybe he’s preparing a place for me to die.  
_     Applause ripped through the studio as the drama girls broke into exuberant ovation.  “Bravo!” several called out excitedly.  
     “That was marvelous!” Elfriede beamed, stepping onto the floor.  “Absolutely perfect!  This performance is going to be a masterpiece!”  
     Fakhir grumbled at that, tossing the light excuse for a sword to one of the girls who’d handed it to him.  She grinned back at him happily and he shrugged away, scanning the crowd for a familiar face.  He frowned, “Where’s Aria?”  
     Elfriede cocked her head, “Who?”  
     “You mean Duck?” Adelind pointed at the back door, “She went to do some shopping for me.”  
     The studio’s main door swung open and a dark-haired brunette entered with a bag tossed over her shoulder.  “Is this where they’re—oh Elfriede, I’m ready to…”  
     Elfriede’s hand closed on Fakhir’s arm.  “Annette’s here and we’ve got about thirty minutes before Mr. Catt claims the studio.  Let’s run through the lady knight pas de deux, and we’ll do it with the singing this time—”  
     Fakhir shrugged her off, his eyes on the windows and the school gates beyond. A flash of lightning streaked the sky.  Thunderheads had rolled in, and down below in the quad, students and volunteers were hastily erecting tarps over the main stage construction that would house the showcases primary productions.  An itchy feeling took up residence in his chest as he watched the scrambling activity.  An uncomfortable weight like a pall settled on his shoulders.   
     “Fakhir?” Elfriede ventured, “Are you ready to go through it aga—”  
     “I just remembered something I have to do,” he spoke over her, quitting the floor and scooping up his bag in five smooth strides.  
     “Wait, Fakhir!” she called after him, but he was already out the door.  
     “Looks like you can’t hope for much from him after all,” a disgruntled voice followed him out.  
     Fakhir didn’t have time to worry about it.  He took the steps down to the quad two at a time.  Night was rapidly approaching, and a dense fog had risen up from the canal.  An ache started up in his chest, just over his heart, and Fakhir rubbed absentmindedly over the spot.  “Why am I getting this ill feeling?” he wondered aloud.  “Is it the script bothering me?  Or do I have the ghost knight to thank for this?”  
     Either way, he could almost _feel_ the wrongness in the air.  And if something was wrong in Goldkrone Towne, sure as the sun rising in the east Aria was going to be in the center of it.  Without wasting any more time on introspection or doubt, he rushed off into the fog.

***

     A peal of thunder rolled over the town, shaking dust from the eaves over her head and sending chills down Aria’s spine.  She huddled closer to the Schreibwaren, clutching her basket of shopping on one arm, and crumpling Adelind’s meticulous list in her hand.  After a moment, the last growling echoes of the thunder faded away and she shook her head at herself.  “Honestly, Aria, it’s just thunder.”   
     With a grumpy sigh, she smoothed the list back out and squinted at the neatly scrawled letters.  “I didn’t forget anything, did I?”  
     It had taken longer to do the shopping than she’d expected.  While Adelind’s handwriting was neat, its neatness in no way helped Aria’s eyes decipher the loopy text, and after finally identifying an item on the list, she’d depended on the kindness of the various shopkeepers she’d visited to direct her to the rest of her shopping.  But all the items had a line scratched through them now, which meant surely she was finished.  The small purse of coins—the dues money the Drama Club had collected and entrusted to her for these last-minute errands—was tucked safely away in the basket.  She’d hand the whole packet over to Adelind at the dorms and call it a day before she got drenched.  But when she looked up, the streets seemed abnormally empty for what should be a prime shopping hour, and another shiver slid down her spine.   
     “The town feels kind of quieter than usual,” she said to herself, more to hear a voice than for any other reason.  Her mind turned over the mystery.  “Probably because of all the ghost rumors now.”  
     Another rumble of thunder shook the air and put a sharp bounce in her step as she hurried along.  She turned a corner, and another.  A bank of fog settled around her, and she turned another corner onto what should have been krauteselgasse, but found herself instead surrounded by trees.  
     “Oh!” she exclaimed, backpedaling from the leafless, twisted black trunks that lined a stark looking park.  “I must have taken a—” she spun to go back the way she came… but it was gone.  She was on a dirt path that led back through an autumnal forest.  _How long have I been here?_   “This is kind of creepy.”  Her eyes went nervously to the twisted trees.  “Where did this town have a forest like this?”  
     The thudding sound of hooves echoed eerily out from the trees and she froze.  
     Heart thudding heavily in her chest, Aria quickened her steps.  “It’s just a horse Aria, just a horse.  There’s no such thing as a ghost knight, right?  No such thing!”  _And even if there were, a ghost can’t hurt me.  Can it?  
_     Behind her a horse whinnied.  Her reactive scream sliced through the fog, pinpointing her location.  The soft thud of hooves increased from a trot to a gallop and she spun toward the sound.  
     “It’s coming this way,” she gasped, unable to quash the rising fear.  Her courage broke, and she jumped into a sprint.  The basket weighed on her arm, bumping wildly against her leg as she clutched it close and struggled to put as much distance between herself and her pursuer.  The clunky black shoes of her school uniform caught at loose dirt and shallow roots, impeding her progress.  
     Chancing to look back, Aria’s breath froze in her lungs at the sight of an armored horse, the man on its back equally armored.  His face was shielded by a guard providing only narrow slits through which his eyes could not be glimpsed.  In his hand was a sword.  And it most definitely _wasn’t_ a ghost!  
     Another scream slipped free, and she dodged to the side, rolling behind a tree just as the horse overtook her and… continued pounding down the dirt path.  
     Her heart bruised against her ribs as it threatened to beat right out of her chest.  She cowered there behind the tree for long seconds before convincing herself that the knight wasn’t going to turn back and attack her.  The sound of the horse had faded into the distance.  Pulling herself up and dusting dirt and leaf debris from her skirts, it took her a moment to realize the pounding she felt against her chest was the pendant, not her heart.  Realization shook her.  “The ghost knight has a heart shard,” she breathed in awe.            
     The faint sound of hooves returned through the trees, and fear spiked in her veins.  “Not again!”   But they weren’t coming from the direction the knight had gone.  She turned toward the sound.  
     “Aria!  Is that you there?”  
     Her mouth dropped open.  “Fakhir?”  Eyes fixed on the horse, she pointed at the creature, “Where did you get—”  
     He reined in beside her, eyes sweeping her from head to foot.  He frowned at her disheveled appearance.  “Are you alright?”  
     Aria gaped at him.  Still wearing his black dance attire, though it looked as though he’d had time to throw on a few other articles of clothes and grab his… sword?  And a horse?  “Fakhir, how did you…?  Where did you…?”  
     His gaze sharpened on her.  “Are you hurt?”  
     Mutely she shook her head.  Then she pointed down the path, “Th-the ghost knight.”  
     Eyes narrowing, Fakhir calmed his increasingly restless horse with a hand on its neck.  “So you saw him?”  
     Clutching her pulsing pendant in a tight fist, Aria nodded.  “And I think he might be carrying a shard of Mytho’s heart with him.”  
     “What?”    
     The horse whinnied in protest of his sharp reaction, and Aria stepped quickly to avoid its impatiently prancing hooves.  
     “I see,” Fakhir growled.  “So he still had a duty he needed to dispatch as a knight.”  
     Her eyes went to the sword.  “Fakhir,” she ventured shakily, “you’re not going to fight him, are you?”  
     “I am.  He’s been seeking the enemy he’s supposed to fight.”  
     “But that’s not you!” she cried.  
     Fakhir shrugged.  “Maybe it is today.  After I defeat him, you just need to return the heart shard to Mytho.”  He cast a grim look her way.  “If we end up dying on each other’s swords, just leave me where I lie.”  Without another word, he set his spurs to the horse’s flanks and raced away.  
     After a shocked moment, Aria stepped out into the middle of the path after him.  “Don’t you dare die, Fakhir!” she shouted at his disappearing back.  “Or I’ll kill you myself!”

***

     The dark prince waited idly on the branch of the tree where he had perched, watching the ghost knight ride closer.  Mytho smiled at the armored figure, stepping out where he could be seen through the clinging fog.  
     The knight’s horse shied with a sharp cry, bringing the surprisingly substantial specter to an abrupt halt.  
     Mytho laughed.  “It appears that horse already senses who its master should be,” he purred.   
     The knight stiffened, his demeanor challenging.  
     Smirking, Mytho drew himself up.  “That’s right old friend, we meet again.”  His eyes swept the man on the horse.  “It’s been a long while, hasn’t it?”  
     Slowly, the knight raised his visor to see the prince better.  There was nothing behind the helmet but darkness, as if an empty suit of armor sat astride the phantom horse.  
     A wave of something hit Mytho, and the darkness seemed to clear for an instant from his mind.  A vision formed.  A checkerboard floor seeming to stretch on for eternity, the black and white squares slick with dark blood.  A battleground where no war should have touched.  Too many bodies, too few friends.  _“Useless, good-for-nothing piece of shite!”_ The sound of a shield hitting the tiles and the clash of steel on steel.  A woman kneels before a monster, begging for her life.  _“No please!  I can explain!”_   The face of a friend draining of life, a face he should know.  _“Leave it be!”_    
     Too late.  Always too late.  One step, two, but not close enough.  The knight cannot see the blow coming, but Mytho could.  Emotion pounding through the hall.  Anger.  Pain.  Betrayal.  A warm splash of blood on his face and he catches a falling body.  A woman screams…  
     The darkness returned and the prince shook his head as if he could clear it of the haunting images.  He narrowed his eyes at the knight.  “Do not attempt that again.”  The voice dropping from his lips was not his own.  
     The knight’s horse reared, and he flourished his sword as though readying for battle.  
     “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Mytho cackled.  “I am, after all, still the prince am I not?”  He gestured at himself.  “Your pledge still stands in death, I believe.”  
     Anger seemed to radiate from the knight now.  
     “Be at ease, old friend,” Mytho grinned and spread his hands like claws at his sides.  “I can give you what you crave.  An enemy to defeat!”

***

     Fakhir pulled sharply back on the reins.  Gringolet bucked a little beneath him in protest, and he shushed the horse placatingly.  Before him a vision of horror was spread out.  The autumnal forest gave way to a twisted, barren landscape of leafless trees.  In the branches of one such tree stood Mytho garbed as the dark prince.  Before him rode the ghost knight.  From where he was, Fakhir couldn’t hear their conversation.  But the twisting of his gut warned of evil in the air.  He urged Gringolet closer, and the wind brought the prince’s words to him.  
     “Your sword is seeking blood, isn’t it?” Mytho murmured to the knight.  His eyes flashed to Fakhir, and a cruel smile twisted over the prince’s lips.  “Cut down that useless excuse for a knight!” Mytho raged.  
     “Mytho!” Fakhir cried out, but his attempt to bring his friend back to himself was distracted when the ghost knight rounded on him, sword at the ready.  His breath caught in his throat.  _It’s just like the dream.  
_     “Now,” the prince growled, “if you are a true knight, do the job!”  
     Fakhir drew his sword and the knight slowly approached, the phantom horse goosestepping regally.  To Fakhir’s surprise, Gringolet naturally circled the other horse, goosestepping as well, though he’d never trained the steed to do so.  His eyes went to the knight’s closed visor.  “You’re the one who showed me the end of the story, aren’t you?”  
     There was no answer, save for the clash of steel as the knight closed with him.  Fakhir barely brought his sword up in time.  The force of the blow shivered down his arm.  He narrowed his eyes.   _I didn’t expect him to move so fast._    
     The knight disengaged and closed again, aiming a sweeping blow at Fakhir’s neck this time.  
     Fakhir caught the blow in time and growled.  “Just as you wish.  I’ll take this sword and plunge it through your heart.”  He parried the blow away and struck his own offense which the knight hastily blocked.  “That way you can be at peace!”  
     The knight countered with unnatural speed and got under Fakhir’s guard.  
     To Fakhir’s shock, Gringolet rose up in levade, effectively shifting Fakhir so the knight’s sword glanced off his own.  
     Reversing away, the phantom horse gnashed its teeth against its bit and screamed a challenge.  
_Okay then._ Fakhir closed his left hand around the reins and tightened his grip on the sword in his right.  Gringolet shifted in passade, making a slow turn to keep the knight on Fakhir’s right as they traded blows back and forth.   
     The phantom horse shifted its weight, kicking out at Gringolet with its forelegs.  
     Fakhir barely kept his balance as his horse elevated on its rear legs and hopped aside in an effortless courbette.  “Warn me or something next time,” he hissed at his mount.  Twelve years he’d ridden this horse, and not once had the canny steed ever demonstrated such skills.  
     The phantom horse piaffed restlessly as the knight tried to angle his longer sword to come in at Fakhir’s unprotected left flank.  
     Gringolet pirouetted, and Fakhir turned the tables by striking at the knight’s left side at the end of the turn.  His blow bounced off the specter’s armored side.  
     They continued to exchange blows, the horses fighting each other beneath them, and Fakhir finally fell into a rhythm with Gringolet.  The steeds danced effortlessly around each other, almost mirror images as they engaged in their own battle while their riders sliced and swung at each other, neither able to gain the upper hand.  Though the ghost knight clearly had more experience, more weight and height, and whatever added advantage his spectral speed afforded him, with Gringolet dancing beneath him with the expert training of a horse used to war, Fakhir managed to keep pace.  It was a strange ballet of steel and hooves, and if he survived this, Fakhir was going to have long words with Kyron about his horse.  
     With a whinnying cry, the phantom horse reared up, and Fakhir had to dodge sharp hooves flying at his face.  
     Huffing in apparent scorn, Gringolet hopped, hopped, and then jumped into a capriole.  All four legs kicked out, and the horse struck a sound blow to the knight.   
     The phantom horse toppled, and the ghost knight was thrown free of his saddle.  
     Fakhir kicked out of his stirrups and leapt down to meet the spirit on even ground.  The ghost knight, straightening, apparently not daunted in the slightest by his spill, swung his heavy longsword down in an overhead strike that seemed to rend the very fabric of reality.  
     Fakhir barely got his blade up in time to block the deadly blow, the swords ringing as they met.  Numbness shot through his arms with the force of the block, and he dodged away as his guard fell.  The knight pressed him, keeping the advantage, forcing Fakhir back step by step, until Fakhir tripped on a root and lost his rhythm.  
     The knight didn’t hesitate.  
     Fakhir hastily knocked the specter’s sword aside, but that didn’t stop him as he closed bodily and, wrapping a fist in Fakhir’s shirt, lifted him off his feet and tossed him across the clearing as though he weighed nothing at all.  
     Fakhir hit the ground with a grunt, pain exploding in everything that made contact with the hard earth.  He only barely managed to keep hold of his weapon, and when he looked up, he could see the ghost knight rushing toward him to make the killing blow.  Gritting his teeth at his body’s protests, Fakhir surged to his feet and prepared to stand his ground.  
     A flash of white blurred at the edge of his vision, and then to Fakhir’s horror he saw _Tutu_ land in front of the charging knight.  “Stop!” she entreated, both hands held out as if she could hold the combatants apart with sheer force of will.  
     The ghost knight didn’t stop.  He didn’t slow.  He charged on, ready to cut the girl aside on his rush to destroy his enemy.  
     Fear lodged in Fakhir’s throat and, abandoning his own defense, he rushed forward and caught the girl around the waist, rolling them both aside at the last moment.  He felt the sting of the ghost knight’s blade hiss along his shoulder as he took them both to the ground, twisting to cushion the fall, and then rolling to put himself between her and the knight.  
     “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded angrily.  
     She pushed at him impatiently.  “Trying to keep you alive, you fool!”  Moving faster than his bruised and battered muscles could manage, she was on her feet again, and _again_ putting herself between him and the knight.  “Do not fight!” she ordered.  
     “Tutu!” he screamed as the knight rounded on her.  
     She dodged out of his reach, closer to the knight, into a rising bank of fog.  The cloud of mist thickened, obscuring everything in sight.  “Tutu!” he cried out again.  “Damn it, where are you?”  
     But when the meager breeze blew the bank of fog aside in swirling eddies, Fakhir’s stomach dropped to the leaf-strewn ground.  She and the ghost knight were nowhere to be seen.

***

     As the fog closed around them, blocking Fakhir from view, Tutu breathed a small sigh of relief.  Maybe, maybe without a target, the knight could be reasoned with.  Surely whatever had wakened the specter from his grave, the prince’s heart shard had something to do with it.  Like Annaliese at the ruined manor, this poor soul had been roused from its resting place by an emotion not its own.  
     “Please,” she begged of it, lifting her hands into the mime for dance.   
     The knight canted his head at her, scrutinizing her actions as though trying to discern her intent.  Then he lifted his sword and swung at her.  
     Tutu leapt aside, twisted, jumped, while the knight swung and swung and swung.  She nimbly evaded each attack.  It was not quite a dance, but similar enough.  “Why?” she demanded as she spun away again, each step taking her further and further from Fakhir.  “Why are you doing this?  What drives you?”  
     The knight didn’t answer except to redouble his efforts.  He sped up, and this time she felt the bite of pain that kissed against her skin.  She couldn’t keep the cry off her lips as the sword bit into her flesh again.  A slice on her side, another her arm, and her leg.  Shallow cuts that impeded her ability to avoid him.  Another kiss of pain flared against her neck and she fell back, landing on the wet leaves.  
     “Tutu!”  Fakhir’s frantic voice came from somewhere beyond the obscuring fog.  “What happened?  Where are you?”  
     Suppressing the natural tears of hurt, she called back.  “Stay away!”  
     The ghost knight towered over her, looming large against the grey sky overhead.  He lifted his longsword for a death strike.  
     Groaning, Tutu forced herself up on shaky limbs.  “No matter how many times you swing your sword your heart won’t be satisfied.”  She gazed up at him imploringly.  “I think you’ve come to that realization.”  Spreading her arms around to take in the twisted trees, she went on, “Look around, there’s nothing to fight for here.  No enemy to face.  It’s not _your_ heart that’s inside you now.”  
     Slowly, the knight’s sword dropped to his side.  
     Drawing in a shaky breath, Tutu rose up en pointe and started to dance.  Her pointe shoes whispered across the leaves with an eerie susurrus too close to the sound of rustling feathers.  “What do you want so badly that you took your lover’s life?” she asked as she danced.  “That you can’t stop fighting even after you’ve died.  You’re so sad, you’ve suffered so much, you hold so much hate.  What do you so want so badly to carry all that around even now?”  
     The knight raised his sword to strike again.  
     Tutu faced him, doing nothing to stop the blow that would fall.  She squared herself to accept it.  “Is this thing truly so much more precious than a lover’s life?”  She stepped forward, challenging him to let the fatal blow fall.  “Please,” she begged, daring to step closer still.  One step, two, and she was inside his guard.  One last step and she was close enough to reach out and wrap her arms around him in a chaste embrace.  “Please stop this fighting and give Mytho back his heart.”  
     A vision grew in Tutu’s mind, shadowy and indistinct, not quite real.  A young woman with shining hair falling at a regal knight’s feet.  _“Stop!”_ the woman begs.  _“Please stop my lord.  It’s true that I’m the enemy’s daughter, but I love you.”_   The vision wavered like a pretty fiction too sanitized to be true.  Like a planted lie.  
    Exerting a small amount of her skill, Tutu pushed against the vision and felt it shimmer, splinter, and then it shattered.  A different picture took its place:  A dark-haired woman weeping over a broken body.  Tutu gasped against the truth and pulled back from the knight, gazing up into the dark slits of his visor.  “You didn’t kill your lover.  She—she…”  
     “She may as well have killed _you_.”  
     Startling away from the faceless knight, Tutu spun and saw a veiled figure standing at the edge of the trees.  “Cundrie?” she gasped.  
     The woman stepped out of the bank of fog, tendrils of mist clinging to her skirts.  A vagrant breezed swept around her, sending her silks fluttering.  And as Tutu watched, the veil wrapped tightly around her face began to unwind.  Dark hair flew free as it fell away, but the face beneath…  
     Tutu clapped a hand across her mouth and her eyes burned with tears.  
     The woman’s face was covered in mottled burn scars.  
     “My love,” she murmured, half reaching for the knight.  
     Dropping his sword, the knight took half a step toward her before freezing in place.   
     Cundrie walked right up to him and put a hand to his visor over his cheek.  “You have always been better than this,” she murmured.  
     He fell to his knees at her feet and bowed his head.  
     The woman looked up, her eyes meeting Tutu, and she nodded once before fading into fog.  
     Agape, Tutu stared at the kneeling knight and the place where the veiled woman had stood.  The rubies at her throat gave a heavy thud, reminding her of her purpose here.  She turned to the knight.  “Your battle has been over for a long time,” she murmured, stretching into an arabesque.  She held a hand out to him which he took.  And then, as the knight similarly vanished into mist, she drew the prince’s heart shard forth.  
     “I am the feeling of valour,” the glowing shard informed her gravely.  
     Tutu offered it a small smile.  “Valour,” she greeted.  _The shards of Mytho’s heart that I gave back are making him suffer.  Krähe has poisoned his heart with raven’s blood.  But surely… surely this is what I can do for him now._ Holding out her hands to it, the shard burst into sparks and reformed as a jewel.  As she’d done once before, she held it up to the air, and watched as it soared away bound for the prince’s heart.   
     _May it give Mytho peace._

***

     Looking on from his place in the trees, Mytho watched the knight’s battle with growing frustration.  First, the specter was unable to best the half-trained knightling.  Then he was brought to his knees by a sprite of a girl.  He sneered at the heart shard of valour, and watched in scorn as Tutu cast it aside.  Perhaps she’d realized at last that there was no fighting the darkness.  
     Except…  
     The shard _didn’t_ go asunder.  No.  It came straight for him!  
     He cried out in pain at the searing brand of the shard against his flesh, the agony of it forcing its way back into his chest.  And then the comforting, wonderful darkness in his mind… cracked.

  _“Useless, good-for-nothing piece of shite!”  
__The sound of a shield hitting the checkerboard.  
__“No please!  I can explain!”  
__Mytho watched the knight turn from his battle toward the woman kneeling at the Raven’s feet, begging for her life.  For all their lives.  “Leave it be!” he cried out.  
__The Raven… von Rothbart… raised his knife over the cringing woman, even as his demon crow warriors closed in on the prince and the knight on their checkered battlefield._ No!  _The word choked in his throat as he watched.  Distracted by the woman’s pleas, the knight didn’t see the death blow coming.  Mytho rushed forward.  Too late!  Always too late.  
__Hot blood sprayed across his face as he cut the demon in two.  But the damage was done.  His knight fell sideways, and Mytho caught him, sinking to the ground.  
__The woman screamed and dodged von Rothbart’s blade.  She retreated across the battlefield, dodging around the last two remaining soldiers as they cut down von Rothbart’s forces, and fell to her knees at his side.  
__“My love,” she whispered, reaching one shaking hand out to stroke the knight’s face.  
__Parsifal’s gaze went to her, even as he choked on his own blood.  
__Her tears hit the tiles, and Mytho wondered how many tears would have to fall to wash this red stain clean.  “You were always better than this,” she sobbed.  
__For a moment, his eyes cleared.  “I love you,” he said.  And then he said no more.  
__Mytho looked up, over the battlefield at his fallen men, the enemy.  All would share the same grave.  He looked to the woman, and then back to where the girl stood on the edge of things.  “Go to her,” he ordered, setting aside the body of his friend.  He stood and put a hand upon the pommel of his sword.  Not_ his _sword.  The sword of the King.  Godfrey’s sword.  
__The woman grabbed at the hem of his doublet.  “What will you do?”  
__His eyes went to von Rothbart and he drew forth Godfrey’s sacred blade.  “What needs to be done.”_

      The darkness swirled back… or tried to.  It couldn’t close in.  It wouldn’t mix now with the light that the returned shard had splintered into his world.  Agony exploded in his chest, in his head.  Mytho clutched at his hair and howled as the darkness swirled like a cloak around him, bearing him away.

***

     Wandering through the slowly lifting fog in the general direction Fakhir had last heard Tutu’s voice, his eyes swept the ground for any trace of footfall.  A small pattern appeared in the leaves, like the tiny ripples of a pond. Pulse quickening, he sped up, following the growing pattern into a clearing of trees that were no longer twisted and lifeless.  In fact … he recognized this place.  It was a tiny park, not nearly large enough to have housed the things that happened here.  
     He gazed around in bewilderment.  “The ghost knight?  Was he able to die?”  
     The last of the fog lifted, and his eyes caught on faint glimmer of something on the ground.  Stooping to retrieve it, he tangled his fingers in the gold chain and drew Aria’s pendant forth from the leaves.  
     “Aria,” he breathed, panic renewing.  He cast his gaze about and saw a crumpled form at the base of a hawthorn tree.  A little white duck, its fluffy down just beginning to cut through with stiff white feathers.  Feathers now stained red.  
     “Aria!”  
     His sword hit the ground and he staggered forward, falling to his knees beside the still form.  “Oh God,” he murmured, “don’t be dead.  Please!”  
     The duck’s chest lifted with breath, and Fakhir sagged with relief.  Not far away, a basket lay on its side.  Fakhir retrieved it, gathered a length of fabric from its contents, and carefully swaddled the wounded bird and laid it in the basket even as he ignored the tears blurring his vision.   
_Can’t I—can’t I even protect_ her?

***

     From his place in limbo, the storyteller’s spirit cackled insanely as he rocked, watching the flowing sands of time that reflected back the image of a useless knight scooping the shattered bird into a basket.  “Futile attempt, boy!” he roared joyously, “I don’t need the little duck anymore, I already know where the other heart shards are!”  
     He rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation.  Yes, it was all coming together nicely now.  The prince had succumbed to the darkness inside him.  The fool of a girl had returned the last wandering shard of his heart.  And his little crow was primed to offer him a heart for sacrifice.  Yes, everything was coming together _perfectly._  
     “Not everything.”  
     Nearly leaping out of his own bones, the spirit wheeled around in alarm and beheld… “You!” he exclaimed.  
     Smirking, the specter of Cundrie swayed her hips as she intruded upon his gloating moment.  “Thought you could rid yourself of me so easily, old man?”  
     “I should have expended with you long ago!” he hissed.  
     She placed a mocking hand over her heart.  “Oh, don’t you remember?  You did.”  Her smirk turned into a grin, “or you tried to, at least.”  
     Growling, the spirit glared at her.  “You’re the one who dropped that script on the drama club, aren’t you?”  
     She shrugged carelessly.  “You mean that script?” negligently she flicked her wrist toward the flowing sands.  
     Pivoting to keep the treacherous witch in his sights, the spirit locked one eye upon the reflected image of the script in its locked cupboard.  And as he watched, the cupboard was unlocked, and a strange pair of aged hands reached in… and yanked the manuscript away.  
     “What’s this!” he exclaimed.  “Who is that interloper?  I didn’t write that in!”  
     “Fool,” the woman hissed at his back.  “Can’t you see?  This isn’t your story anymore.”

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In keeping with the lore of Arthurian legend regarding the artifacts surrounding Fakhir in the original anime, Gringolet was the name of a horse who appeared in many romances of the period. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival", Gringolet comes from the Grail castle. He is always described as a sturdy charger with distinctive ears, well-known for his ability in combat.


	12. Der Schlafenden Prinz

_**The Sleeping Prince** _

 

     A scream split the air and Mytho turned in its direction toward the steps of the King’s Cathedral.  He watched in dawning horror as a black-haired boy, barely a child, jumped off the church’s steps and raced toward the shimmering edge of the wards.  
     “Stop him!” his knight cried out in panic.  
     The girl was already following, but the child possessed rare speed for his age, and he hit the edge of the ward.  Mytho expected him to bounce off.  Even a child of the blood would be repelled by a ward of this strength.  But to his shock the boy raced easily through.  The girl followed.  
     He blinked.  
_Again?  
_     The dream was becoming as familiar as an old friend, and he struggled in its temporary sanctuary to find peace from the shadows which seemed of late to rule his mind. There was no peace to be had in this scene though.  
     Crying out in despair, the woman who only moments ago knelt at his feet, leapt up and raced for the wards as well.  
     “Connie, wait!” his knight called out, trailing after her.  “The barrier is down, the raven’s army approaches!”  
     Unable to stand by and do nothing, Mytho braced a hand on the pommel of his sword and rushed after them.  “Those who are left, prepare them to defend the town!” he shouted to the bespectacled soldier as he breached the ward.  
     The streets beyond the cathedral’s protection were eerily quiet.  Yet in the distance rumbled the low thunder of an impending holocaust, and he knew it was the raven’s winged army approaching from the south.  He wondered desperately how long they could hold against the onslaught.  Surely not forever. _If only my armies were here.  
__Wait, what?_    
     His feet stuttered to a stop and he shook his head, trying and failing to discern the meaning behind his own random thoughts.  Nothing came.  
     Another scream shattered the silence to his right, and he turned in that direction.  The rushing cacophony of sound spoke of straggling birds which had escaped the river’s wrath—or scouts who preceded the southern attack.  
     Curses and caws came to him as he raced toward a flurry of black feathers.  His knight was valiantly facing down half a hundred birds, the woman at his side holding her own with a cudgel.  Mytho couldn’t see the girl and fear lodged in his throat.  _No!  
_     Drawing his own sword, Mytho joined the fray.  And though only minutes before he would have thought it impossible, he found renewed strength in his limbs to face the attack.  Adrenaline pumped through his veins, giving power and force to his movements.  Light danced along his sword, throwing sparks into the heavy bodies of the birds.  He could see blue flames snaking from the knight’s hands to the gory creatures.  Fighting with steel and magic drained the body’s resources faster.  And far sooner than he should have, Mytho felt himself slackening.  _Wait?  I have magic?  
_     In his moment of distraction, a shrieking crow dove for his face, and he failed the dexterity to block it.  
     Out of nowhere, a thorny vine whipped forth and knocked the bird aside.  Another wrapped around a second and squeezed the screaming creature to death.  More vines, some bearing baleful blossoms, joined the fray and between the three of them and the wildly animate vegetation, the last of the birds were wrested from the sky.  
     Mytho’s eyes went across the small square to where the girl huddled over a tiny body, fire and fury in her eyes.  Again, he knew without knowing how that _she_ was the source of the vine’s wrath.  _The flowing and formless, the growing and ever-changing._   Power like hers should not be possible for the most adept of their kind, but certainly not for one who’d only just come into her talents.  
     At his side, the woman gazed at the girl with wide eyes.  Her mouth opened as if to say something.  But then those dark eyes darted to the _thing_ the girl protected, and with a low cry of pain she dropped the cudgel and raced to the child, lifting its broken and clearly dead form in her arms.  
     Mytho looked to the knight and was taken aback at the lifeless expression in his friend’s eyes.  He made no movement toward the tragic scene, his face a mask of stone.  
     “Let me try,” the girl was saying, her hands plucking at the tiny body the inconsolable woman clutched to her chest.  
     Horror washed over him when he realized what she intended.  Belatedly, Mytho started forward to stop her.  A strong hand gripped his arm and he looked back.  The knight held him, eyes still fixed on the scene.  “Let me go!” he commanded.  
     But the man didn’t move.  
     The girl had managed to retrieve the boy’s body.  She placed her hands across the ugly, gaping wounds which covered the child, and Mytho felt the very moment she started to pull her energy in.  “No!” he cried out in panic, feeling the sucking void in his soul as the girl drew on all the power she could gather.  The air seemed to whistle around her, sucking in upon her as she drew out all the heat and life from everything she could reach.   
     Beside her the woman withered, his knight groaned in pain, and even Mytho could feel the icy agony in his bones as the girl attempted an impossible feat.  The wind rose to a rushing roar as Nature itself cried out against her actions.  Mytho fell to his knees.  
     All around them reality itself was ripping apart.  A storm of apocalyptic proportions raged, trapped within the tiny space of their little square.  This dream of fantasy or memory had morphed into a bloody nightmare of agonizing pain and insanity, and Mytho desperately sought to wake from it.  _Wake up, wake up, wake up!_ But there was no waking from this madness.  The howling, wailing, _screaming_ of the wind ripped through his mind, his sanity, his soul, and left him bare.  
_Silence.  
_     Opening his eyes, Mytho gazed around in bleary wonder at the little square of their battlefield.  The bird’s bodies were gone, not one stain of blood remained on the cobbles.  Every trace of ash and dust was swept away.  All the plants which seconds before had blossomed over in the window boxes of houses and shops were now withered and dead.  The air was frozen.  Fractals of ice shattered across windows on all sides.  
     But the girl…  
     She _blazed_ with power.  Golden light shown as bright as the sun in her eyes.  She raised her hands, and as Mytho watched in abject horror and speechless awe, the air warmed, steam rose from the ground, and the dead flowers blossomed again.  His eyes traced to a movement by a wagon’s wheel where one bird’s heavy body was lodged.  One by one, each of the bird’s ebon feathers turned white, and then its body stirred.  With a shake and a hop, the crow struggled out from under the wagon and turned its snowy head around the square before taking to wing with a confused cry.  
     And at the girl’s knees, the tiny, broken body of the boy shifted.  He opened his eyes.  
     “Deus miserere nobis,” his knight uttered.  
     Mytho felt the sincere plea to his bones.  _God have mercy on us._    
     His eyes met those of the girl, and any lingering doubt he may have had was obliterated.  There was only one person who could possibly wield such power, and even here in the dream where reality might be fantasy, he could not deny it.  _The reign of my grandfather’s line has ended._ He swallowed back the taste of sickness as those most ancient words rang in his head.  _The king is dead.  
__Long live the queen._

 

     Mytho startled to consciousness, jerking awake in a twisted ball as the vision or nightmare seared in his memory.  He wakened to pain.  But the pain, like the dream, was becoming familiar and almost as comforting.  At least in the pain he was _himself._    
_“Stupid prince, not even valour can save you,”_ the dark voice hissed in his mind.  _“This shard too will be poisoned with raven’s blood in time.”  
_     “No,” he hissed back, clutching at his heart and trying to hold onto the memory of the dream.  There was something… something there he needed to grasp.  Needed to remember.  The girl, her eyes—maybe, maybe it was ho—  
_“Foolish boy!”_ the dark voice spat, and a surge of pain accompanied its words.  _“You are mine!”  
_     “No!” he screamed.  He tore at his hair as if he could force the voice out.  “I will _not_ give in to you!”  Curling back into a ball on the floor, he moaned and tried to breathe past the pain.  “I must… I must overcome this raven’s blood in me!”

***

     The door of the smithy slammed open with a crash as Fakhir rushed inside, heedless of propriety, decorum, or the structural integrity of wood.   
     Kyron sat by the stove drinking a cup of tea, and he looked up with surprise at the sudden clatter.  “Ah, Fakhir,” he greeted him.  “I’m glad you’re back.  I saw Gringolet return without you and I was starting to worry.”  
     “Gringolet?” Fakhir asked distractedly.  He’d completely forgotten about the horse.  
     Kyron’s eyes fell to the basket he clutched with shaking hands.  “Ah, I see you went to the market.”  He eyed the hamper’s feathered occupant.  “Is that dinner?”  
     Fakhir blanched and recoiled, cradling the basket protectively against his chest.  “We can’t eat this bird!”  
     Uzura drummed her way out of her corner.  “It’s Duck!” the little girl exclaimed.  “Can’t eat Duck, zura!”  
     Kyron looked from Fakhir to Uzura and back again, a strange expression on his face.  
     “I’m going to my room,” he muttered, hastening past the blacksmith and toward the back of the house and the stairs.  He stopped in his tracks and spun around.  “Gringolet got back here?”  
     The blacksmith swiveled to see him.  “Yes,” he drew the word out cautiously.  “And you owe me a day’s work in the smithy for brushing him down for you.”  
     Fakhir dismissed the statement with a hasty nod.  “Did you know he could do that?”  
     Kyron raised an eyebrow.  “Do what?”  
     Grumbling at his inability to communicate well, he gestured vaguely toward the stable.  “The leaping, and jumping, and—” his erratic thoughts refused to find the right words, and he lamely finished with a vague flourish of his hand.  
     “Ah,” the blacksmith’s eyes lit up.  “You mean the haute école.  Yes, his previous rider had a passion for the high school.”  
     “Huh.”  Fakhir turned away, then spun back again.  “Previous rider?”  
     “I take Duck, zura!” Uzura tugged at the basket.  “Make Duck better, zura!”  
     Kyron watched in amusement as Fakhir held relentlessly to the basket while the little doll tugged on it.  Then his eyes went distant.  “Yes.  My friend, the knight who left me that sword,” he nodded to the Lohengrin blade sheathed at Fakhir’s hip.  “Gringolet belonged to him.”  
     Fakhir’s fingers loosened on the basket as shock left him numb.  Uzura crowed happily and carted her prize away, clumping gracelessly up the stairs sing-songing a ridiculous children’s rhyme.  
     “To the…” Fakhir closed a hand over the pommel at his side.  _Gringolet was my father’s?_   He swallowed hard.  “Why did you give him to me?”  
     Kyron shrugged.  “Because you liked to ride.”  Turning back to the fire he took a long drink of his tea.  “If you’re going to keep that bird in your room, Fakhir.  I suggest you stuff it.”  
_Bird?  
_     His thoughts realigned.   
_Aria!_  
     Without a word to Kyron, he turned and rushed up the stairs, following the sound of Uzura’s voice to his room.  He burst in to see the duck lying on his bed, the mended pendant around her neck.  Uzura stood over her with a pitcher of water.  “Uzura no!”

***

     “Pére?”  
     “Est-ce sa fille?”  
_“Pére!”  
__Run, run, run, run!  
_     “Arrêtez!”  
_Hide._  
     Trembling she cowered in the darkness, the awful stench of garbage surrounding her.  Tears streaked her face, but she dare not make a sound.  Still, the chattering of her teeth and the pounding of her heart seemed too loud in her ears, despite the clamor of the city streets beyond her hiding place.  She had no idea how long she hid there.  Long enough for the air to grow cold and the shadows to grow long.  Long enough that her stomach growled and growled, and then stopped growling and just felt hollow and empty.  Long enough for her tears to dry.  And all the while she flinched at every sound.   
     Twice, people dressed in rags came into her alley, and both times she ducked farther out of sight, fearing what they’d do if they saw her.  But they didn’t seem interested in one tiny creature as they dug through the garbage cans for something to eat.  She wondered if there was anything to eat in the cans.  She wondered if they left any for her, and if she was brave enough to dig for it.  
     A movement at the mouth of the alley made her cower again.  But this man wasn’t dressed in rags.  He started to go past, but then stopped and looked right at her hiding place.  She pressed further into the shadows, but the man stepped into the alley.  
     “Is something there?”  
     Her ears perked up, not that she recognized the strange language he spoke.  But the sound of his voice wasn’t angry or mean.  He sounded… kind.  
     “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”  The man bent down to see her better, and he smiled.  His smile seemed to light up his whole face.  
     Curious but cautious, she wiggled forward out of her hiding place, keeping well away from him in case she had to run again.  But this man seemed nice.  Not like the others before.  
     His smile widened, reaching all the way up to his amber eyes.  “Well what do we have here?”  The way he spoke sounded like a question.  “A little duck?”  
     He seemed… genuinely delighted, and a little of her fear melted away.  Still skittish, she edged a bit closer.  
     The man held out his hand to her.  “It’s okay, little one.  I like ducks.”

 

     Aria groaned and winced away from the light burning through her eyelids.  
     “It’s okay, you can come out!  She’s not naked, zura!”  
_Naked?  
_     Her eyes flew open and she stifled a scream.  Two huge blue eyes in a tiny doll face filled her vision.  “Hey Uzura,” she struggled to a sitting position.  “What are you—”  A floorboard creaked, drawing her attention, and Aria looked around the strange room to see Fakhir hovering uncomfortably by a narrow door.  She frowned.  “Where am I?”  
     His eyes narrowed at her.  “I didn’t know where else to bring you.  You’re at the smithy.”  
     “Oh.”  She looked around the room again.  She was sitting on a neatly made bed… now soaked with water?  The empty pitcher in Uzura’s hands would probably account for that.  A desk sat beside the bed, piled high with books.  There was a dresser, a black trunk, and precious little else in the tiny loft.  “Is this your room?”  
     He crossed his arms defensively.  “Yes.”  
     “Oh!” her eyes rounded, “I didn’t mean—it’s very…” she looked around again.  It actually wasn’t that different from her own loft, maybe a tad bit bigger.  “…clean,” she finished lamely.  
     He harrumphed at that.  
     Wincing, Aria rotated her arm to see the bloody edges of her jacket where the ghost knight’s sword had sliced her.  Apparently, though Tutu took the blow, her poor uniform bore the damage.  “Drat,” she swore, “do you think I can mend that?”  
     Fakhir swore too.  He crossed the floor in three long strides and grasped her wrist.  Though clearly angry, his grip was gentle as he examined the wound.  “It’s not deep,” he assessed.  “Take off your jacket.”  Moving to the desk, he opened the bottom drawer and withdrew a box.  
     Her eyebrows went up as she shrugged out of her jacket.  “You keep medical supplies in your desk?”  
     Again, he harrumphed.  “I live in a blacksmith’s shop.  Accidents happen.”  Pulling the desk chair over, he sat down and began cleaning the shallow cut.  He paused long enough to tilt her chin away to examine the scratch on her neck and make another noncommittal sound before bandaging her arm.  “So, what happened out there?”  
     She shrugged her free shoulder.  “I returned Mytho’s heart shard.  The shard of valour.”  She wondered about that and chewed her lip.  “Do you think that will help him?  To have his valour back?”  
     “Maybe,” he growled.  “Or maybe it will also be susceptible to the raven’s blood.”  
     “Oh,” her voice fell.  She hadn’t considered that.  “Something weird happened too,” she murmured to avoid that line of thought.  
     “Oh?”  
     “There was this woman at the abbey… Cundrie?  I only met her once but, I think she was there too.  When I was trying to get through to the knight.  When I—” she broke off and blinked, “or rather when _Tutu_ dances with people who have heart shards, I—or she—can see the thing that made them have a void in their heart to begin with.  And I could see with the knight what the story said, only then it wasn’t the story like the story hadn’t been real at all, and then Cundrie was there and I think she might have been his lover or something… because he knelt to her.  Which was weird because, was the ghost knight real or was he the character from a story like the prince?”  _And Tutu._ “But if he was a character, how could Cundrie have known him?  But then she disappeared into the mist the same way he did, so maybe she’s a character from the story too, and…”  
     Lost in her babbling Aria didn’t notice Fakhir’s pale face and shaking hands at first, but she trailed off when his reaction registered.  
     “Fakhir?”  
     He took a deep breath.  “She’s real,” he murmured.  Then he squeezed his eyes shut.  “Or she _was.”  
_     Aria’s brow wrinkled in confusion.  “What?”  
     He pushed away and went to the desk, rifling through the piles.  “I met her at the abbey too, back when I retrieved the prince’s sword.  She seemed to know things, but when I went back to question her, I was told she had died.  They buried her in the pauper’s field.  But she left this—” he lifted a piece of paper and held it out to her, “—for me.”  
     Aria shuddered at the bloody illumination.  “What does that say?” she asked.  
     His mouth twisted.  “Ink fades.  Blood remains.”  
     She shuddered again.  “What does it mean?”  
     He was quiet for a long moment, and she didn’t think he would answer her.  Finally he said, “I don’t know.”  
     Aria hugged herself, rubbing her arms briskly to chase away phantom chills.  Summoning her courage, she forced herself to ask the question uppermost in her mind.  “Do you think returning Mytho’s heart will hurt him?”  
     Fakhir’s eyes flashed.  “What of it?”  
     She gasped at the cruelty of his question.  “What?”  
     “No matter what, that moment when all the heart shards are returned will see the raven’s resurrection.  In other words, the start of the battle.”  
     Her face went white.  
     Fakhir looked away, his jaw tightening.  “Mytho must be prepared for some suffering already.  If you aren’t ready to handle that as well, you should stop being Princess Tutu.”  He sighed heavily.  “I’ll protect Mytho with my sword.”  
     Grimacing, Aria pushed off the bed and paced away.  “I wish you weren’t always going around swinging swords and stuff.  It’s dangerous.”  
     He rounded on her, his expression deadly.  “So you’re saying I’m incapable as a knight.  Is that what you think?”  
     Her temper flared.  “That’s not what I said!”  
     He scoffed.  
     Aria growled back at him.  “You’re really good at the swinging swords around and stuff, and you know it!  But…” she trailed off.  _But I don’t want you to get hurt, either._ “You’ve spent all this time researching what’s going on in this town, I just think you’re more than some stereotypical knight swinging a sword, I mean—” she broke off.  “Fakhir?”  
     He was glaring at the floor.  “Since you’re recovered, you should go home.  I’ll walk you.”

***

     “Duck and Fakhir, sitting in the snow!  K-Ü-S-SE-N-D!”  
     Aria glared at Lillie.  “Stop that!” she hissed.  Lillie just kept skipping along singing her ridiculous rhyme, and to Aria’s horror, Piqué joined her.  “You’re both being infants!” she shouted, heedless of the other foot traffic on the way to school.  
     Piqué laughed.  “Oh come on, _everyone_ saw Fakhir walk you back to the dorms last night.”  
     “Well maybe not everyone,” Lillie frowned.  “But everyone is certainly talking about it.  What _were_ the two of you doing out so late together, anyway?”  
     “I told you, I was helping out with the drama club’s presentation for the showcase, and Fakhir is dancing in it, and…” her shoulders slumped.  Oh why bother?  They weren’t going to believe her anyway.  
     “You know,” Lillie finished skipping and cozied up to Aria’s side, “this is _perfect_ timing!  Because the art students are doing a Midsummer Night’s Dream themed display for the showcase, and Miss Bottom has been delivering love letters all week!”  
     Aria’s nose wrinkled, “Miss Bottom?”  
     “Well, I guess in the play it was _Nick_ Bottom,” Piqué shrugged, “but they got a girl to wear the costume, so it’s _Miss_ Bottom.”  
     Aria was totally lost.  “What are we talking about?”  
     “This!”  Lillie shoved a card in her face.  “I know how much you struggle with writing, so I took the time to write it for you!  All you have to do is sign your name!”  
     Horror washed through her as she realized what they were saying, and she tried to snatch the letter from Lillie’s hand.  “No!” she cried out.  
     “No need!” Piqué sang, plucking the letter from Lillie’s fingers.  She scampered away to the railing of the school’s bridge, and before Aria could stop her, pulled out a pen and signed the letter with a flourish.  “I can sign Duck’s name better than she can.”  
     “You’re being ridiculous!” Aria cried, finally snagging the letter.  “And presumptuous.  Fakhir and I—we aren’t like that.”   
     She raised her arm to toss the letter into the canal, and Lillie caught it away.  “Don’t you dare!” she cried.  “I used my best stationary for this.  It’s a masterpiece!”  
     “Fine!” Aria stole it back and tucked it safely into her pocket.  “But I’m not giving it to anybody.”  
     They’d reached the quad by now, and Piqué squeezed her hand.  “We’re off to dress rehearsal,” she said, “you going to stick around and check out the other student’s displays?”  
     She glanced around the quad and remembered they had no classes today, but those dancing in Giselle had their final practice.  Her shoulders drooped a little at being left out.  “Yeah, I guess I’ll just wander.”  
     “They’ve got all kinds of vendors this year,” Lillie commiserated, the look on her face clear that she was trying to cheer Aria up.  
     She forced a smile, “Go on, you don’t want to be late for practice.”  
     Lillie squeezed her hand, and the two took off across the quad.  
     Feeling a little at a loss, Aria picked a random direction and started walking.  The quad had been transformed for the showcase.  A central stage was set up in front of the swan fountain, with a seating area for the parents and benefactors.  Others brought blankets to lay out on the grass, though the performances wouldn’t start until this evening.  There was still plenty of activity, however.  Booths and student displays were scattered between vending stalls, and crowds milled around from one to the next.  Students in their uniforms were interspersed among the plainly dressed guests and the black-robed faculty.  And just as her friends had promised, a tall girl in a donkey costume true to the role of Bottom from the play was prancing around hither and thither, to the general amusement of onlookers.  
_Miss Bottom.  
_     She shook her head in exasperation and pulled the letter out of her pocket.  “A love letter to Fakhir?” she huffed.  “If I gave him this he’d say something like, _don’t waste time on trifles._   Not that I wasted any time on it, I just have really weird friends.”  She sighed.  _Good friends.  But weird.  
_     A shadow fell across her and Aria looked up.  As if summoned by her thoughts, the donkey-girl stood before her and pointed at the note.  “Are you agonizing over your love?”  
     Startled, Aria could only gape.   
     The girl stepped back into an elaborate bow.  “Allow me to introduce myself!  I am Bottom, friend to all those who are in love!”  Straightening, she pointed at the note again.  “Is this your letter?”  
     Aria’s finger’s tightened.  “Oh!  N—”  
     “Don’t worry!”  Miss Bottom tugged the note out of her hand.  “All messages of love are delivered in strictest confidentiality!”  
     “Wait!” Aria tried to catch her, “No, that’s not my letter!”  She started to chase after the donkey, but a hand caught her sleeve and pulled her around.  She found herself facing Elfriede.  
     The drama club’s president looked harried.  “Duck!  I’m glad I found you!  Everything’s falling apart!”  
     “Whoa,” she waved her hands, “slow down, what’s wrong?”  
     The girl took a breath.  “First, Annette quit when Fakhir wouldn’t practice with her yesterday, and then Mr. Catt rearranged the schedule at the last minute _knowing_ we hadn’t had much time to practice together.  We’re supposed to go on _this afternoon_ and I don’t have any dancers!”  She was wringing her hands and looked to be seconds away from bursting into tears.  
     “Shh, shh,” Aria consoled soothingly.  “It’s going to be okay.  I can fix this!”  She looked wildly around the quad.  “Get your people together,” she ordered, “and go to the small practice room in the ballet school.  I’ll meet you there.”  She started to turn away.  
     “Wait!” Elfriede protested, “where are you going?”  
     Aria squared her shoulders, “I’m going to get you some dancers.”

***

     Rue stumbled over the broken foundation of the ruined manor house, jumping at every shadow as if the raven would leap out at her—though he rarely to never showed himself in the day.  “Mytho!” she called out.  “Are you here?”  
     She’d worried when he didn’t show up for the early rehearsal and had gone to his room only to find it in complete disarray.  Bits of shredded correspondence had littered the floor, the bedsheets were tangled into knots, and the furniture knocked askew as if a violent storm had swept through.  She’d known that Tutu returned a new shard to him, and her heart ached that it might affect him so extremely.  
     About to give up and flee the creepy ruin, the crunch of tiles drew her attention, and she crept toward the place where the raven usually roosted.  Mytho stood on the shattered foundation, though _stood_ was an overstatement.  He was hunched over, one hand pressed to the blasted hunk of a standing wall, and he seemed to be shaking.  Rue crept closer.  
     “I have to remember,” he muttered, “I have to  defeat the raven’s blood!”  His shaking increased and he sank to his knees.  
     Pity and anger swept through her in equal measures.  Pity won, and putting aside her own discomfort in this place, Rue spun into Krähe and landed on the shattered white and black tiles.  “My prince,” she murmured, not wanting to startle him.  “You needn’t suffer anymore.  Your princess is I.”  
     Mytho’s head came up, his eyes fixing almost desperately upon her even while crows gathered on the perches and roosts around them.  “K-krähe?”  
     Going to him, Krähe knelt and wrapped her arms around the prince.  “I will rescue you from your suffering and pain,” she promised.  Standing, she drew him to his feet and knelt before him, taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek.  “Return, prince of the crows.  Return to me.”  
     Something flashed in Mytho’s eyes.  Recognition maybe, but his face twisted in agony and he pulled his hand away.  “No,” he gasped.  “No.  It’s not right.  It isn’t right.”  He shook his head violently and backed away.  “I will not become the prince of crows.”  
     Krähe rose, reaching out to him.  She ached to take him in her arms and ease his pain.  “If you resist, your suffering will just continue.”  
     He cringed away.  “I can handle suffering.”  
     Desperately she followed him, trying to embrace him, to pull him back.  “You have raven’s blood running through your veins,” she crooned, “just like I do.  No one can erase it.  No one can stop it.”  
     With a cry of pain, Mytho fell to his knees and curled in on himself.  “No!” he whimpered.  
     Dancing naturally now, Rue went to him.  “I will love you more deeply than anyone else can.  I will give you my love.”  She lifted into an arabesque and embraced him from behind, wishing she could pull him into herself and keep him forever.  _Keep him safe forever.  
_     The thought sounded like a gunshot in her mind.  
     Suddenly Mytho’s shoulders stiffened.  “You’ll _give_ me your love?” he mocked.  “How kind.”  Grabbing her wrist, he slung her suddenly around, wrenching her shoulder painfully.  “It’s good to know your love seeks its natural object, _princess._ ”   
     “My prince?” she gasped.   
     His face twisted into a sneer and he raised his hand.  Pain exploded across her cheek.  
     Shocked, she could only stare at him as her eyes filled with tears.  
     “You ought to love me more,” he sneered.  Me alone.”  He raised his hand to strike her again, but something behind his eyes seemed to shatter, and instead he pushed her away.  “Not enough,” he gasped.  With staggering steps, he retreated, lurching like a drunkard.  “Not enough love.”  
     All around, the crows were crying out in murderous cacophony, wings flapping wildly.  Rue turned her teary anger on them.  “Shut up!”  She pressed a hand to her aching cheek and let the tears fall.  “Shut up.”

***

     “I was so worried you wouldn’t show up!” Elfriede stage whispered to Fakhir while the various players scuttled about to their places in anticipation for the opening performance of the summer showcase.   
     The heavy curtain that hid their bustling activity from the patient Friday evening audience beyond cast shadows over Fakhir’s scowling face.  “I said I would, didn’t I?”  
     “Well yes,” she shrugged, “but then you ran out of practice like that, and I—” the curtain started to rise.  “Oh, this is it!  I wish we’d had more time!”  
     Fakhir didn’t think it would have mattered much.  Nobody really came to the Friday evening show anyway.  Except when he looked out across the crowd, he saw that the sensationalism of the ghost knight had indeed drawn a decent-sized audience.  Looking across the stage, he hid his reaction to seeing Annette in the lady knight’s role.  Aria had cornered the girl earlier in the day, and though she was an extremely qualified technical dancer, he was fairly certain the role had looked better when Aria danced it.  
_What the hell am I thinking?  
_     Shaking his head, he stepped out onto the stage to perform his due and dance the role of the doomed knight.  He wondered about how the story had really ended given what Aria told him.  And if it really was Cundrie she’d seen.  Then his thoughts turned to the cryptic message on the illustration of the knight, and his antipathy showed on his face, causing Annette to flinch from him.  _I’m a knight who can’t even protect a princess.  Does that mean the story will stay exactly the same regardless of whether I’m here or not?  Is she better off without me?_  
     A clear alto broke over the stage as Elfriede began to sing, filling in the story while he danced.  Though he’d heard the lyrics in their earlier rehearsals, the words suddenly struck him like a thousand tiny darts under his skin.

 _Mine is not the battle raging,_  
_Mine is not the holy war,_  
_Mine are not the armies staging  
_ _On that checkered field of gore._

   
     A chorus of voices picked up the refrain.  


_Black, white, the game is set._  
_The sides are inked, the blood to let._  
_White, black, and war shall rage  
_ _Upon a checkered stage._

 _  
_      His thoughts went back to the checkered floor of the church where he first faced off Krähe’s demon crows.  Then to the lake, and its checkered field as he fought to keep Tutu from confessing her love and vanishing into a speck of light.  He was meant to die that night.  If it wasn’t for Edel, he would have.  The knight of the story was destined to die.  Yet he’d cheated that.  Did that make him a failure?  
_  
__Mine is not the strategizing,  
__Mine is not the game to end.  
__Mine is but the death and dying,  
__Mine to this lone square defend._

     But he hadn’t defended the prince.  Mytho was still infected by the raven’s blood and Fakhir had no idea how to save him.  He wasn’t able to defend Aria either.  The ghost knight could have killed her last night, and where was he?  What the hell kind of difference could he make?

 _White, black, and red between_  
_The glory fields of kings and queens._  
_Black, white, and red runs down  
_ _Upon the checkered ground._

     The words of the song mocked him.  He was no knight.  He was an imposter.  A charlatan.  A fraud.

 _Mine is not the death and glory,_  
_Mine is not the knight nor knave._  
_Mine is not to write the story,  
_ _Mine is but to turn the page._

     Fakhir almost faltered in his steps because… those weren’t the lyrics Elfriede sang before.  He looked quickly around, but no one else seemed surprised by the change of script. 

 _Black, white, in endless war._  
_The name may change, but not the score._  
_White, black, in rank and file  
_ _Upon the checkered tile._

***

     Mytho leaned heavily against the cool bricks of the ballet building in the shade of the breezeway.  His shoulders shook with the force of holding the darkness at bay.  He couldn’t stop though.  He couldn’t let down his guard for a minute or the darkness would creep back in again.  “I have to honor my valour as a prince,” he whispered harshly.  He’d repeated the mantra all day, in the vain hope that saying the words out loud would help dispel the darkness within.  
     But it was working.  
     Bit by bit, the light that had cracked his mind with the return of the shard was slowly illuminating the darkened corners of his psyche.  Each agonizing ray of light blazed like a lit sun in his head, but he had to hold onto it.  The consequences if he didn’t… couldn’t be borne.  
     He remembered everything he’d done while under the darkness’ sway.  The dancer in St. Godfrey’s square.  The girl in the garden.  Turning the ghost knight onto Fakhir.  Hitting Rue.  _Hitting Rue._ Convulsions racked his body at the memory.  
     Out on the quad a performance was taking place on stage,  and the sound of the song lit a fire in his mind when it reached him. 

 _Mine is not the raven’s black,_  
Mine is not the whitest swan.  
_Mine is not to charge attack,  
_ _Mine is but to play the pawn._

     An earthquake seemed to shake him, the cracks in his mind widening on an agonizing inrush of sensation.  It felt like every nerve in his body was suddenly stripped raw and flayed open.  Light poured in on a violent dawn. 

 _White, black, the lines are blurred._  
_With blood and hate and wrath incurred._  
_Black, white, to know not for  
_ _Upon the checkered floor._

***

     Rue watched Fakhir dance the ghost knight role on the stage, and had to admit, he was doing quite well on his one day’s practice.  She may have liked him for Hilarion, but the ghost knight died too.  Her lips twisted, it was suiting really.  But she didn’t like the music.  The mournful waltz grated over her nerves, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms to cast off chills.  Her cheek ached where Mytho had hit her.  The mere memory of it made tears sting her eyes again, and the woeful notes of the girl’s song added a bitter counterpoint.

 _Mine is not the board to own,_  
_Mine is not the check to mate._  
_Mine is but to stand alone,  
_ _Mine is but to bend to Fate._

     More chills chased up and down her skin and she glared at the presumptuous little soloist to stage right.  What the hell was she thinking with this song?

 _Black, white, it matters not,_  
_The grave we’ll share, one tomb, one rot._  
_White, black, from queen to pawn  
_ _Upon a checkered lawn._

***

     Aria watched the end of the drama club’s performance from the windows of the main studio.  Well, she couldn’t really _watch_ it from here, but she’d watched Annette and Fakhir dance it all afternoon, so she knew what it looked like.  The longer she’d watched the rehearsal, though, the more she’d felt that left out feeling of this morning.  By her reckoning, she was the only student in the school who didn’t have _something_ to show for the showcase.  Not that it should matter to her, but for some reason she couldn’t quite place, it did.  
     She felt oddly… extraneous.  And she couldn’t quite fathom why.  So instead of watching Fakhir’s ballet from the quad, she’d come up here to listen where she could be alone.  At least here she could be of _some_ use.  She rubbed at a spot on the window with the rag she held until it was gone.  Through the open panes, Elfriede’s rich alto drifted in. 

 _Mine is not the crown for wearing,_  
_Mine is not the cross to weep._  
_Mine is not the blade for bearing,  
_ _Mine is but the hope to keep._

_White, black, in stone and clay,  
__They pulse and pound, and fade to grey.  
__White, black, and red washed clean  
__Upon a checkered scene._  

     Aria blinked.  _That wasn’t the song Elfriede sang earlier, was it?_ No.  Definitely not.  The tune was simple enough she’d been singing it to herself all evening as the show set up.

 _Mine is not the honor keeping,_  
_Mine is not this life to crown._  
_Mine is but the battle’s reaping  
_ _‘til to Death at last go down._

     _Those_ were the right words.  What was going on?  Out on the quad the music swelled for the finale, and the chorale raised their voices to echo from the very heights of the clock tower. 

 _Black, white, it’s all the same:_  
_To win the war, to lose the game._  
_White, black, without accord  
_ _Upon a checkered board._

     The song was punctuated by the studio’s main door crashing open.  Startling, Aria spun toward it and her jaw dropped.  
     “Aria…”  
     Mytho was hunched in the doorway, seeming to hold himself up with his hand braced on the frame.  His face was dead white, and his eyes burned with fever.  
     She took an involuntary step toward him.  “Mytho?”  
     “Aria help me,” he begged.   
     He stumbled forward, and without thinking she ran to him.  He collapsed to his knees before her, catching her around the waist to hold himself up.   
     His eyes sought her face, his expression earnest and desperate.  “I don’t know how long I can hold on, Aria.  You have to stop, you have to save yourself.  You have to remember!”  
     Terror clutched at her throat, “R-Remember what?”  
     He doubled over, arms tightening around her as he groaned in apparent pain.  “Everything,” he gasped.  “Goldkrone Towne, the barrier.  You have to stop—please—you have to stop the raven!”  He was shaking uncontrollably now.  
     Aria cast around for aid, but nothing was available.  “Mytho, I-I don’t know what you’re—” she cried out as he suddenly, violently, pushed her away.  She stumbled over her own feet and fell to the floor.  
     “No!  Go, Aria.  I can’t—I can’t hold on!”  He stared at his shaking hands in growing fear.  
     “Mytho!”  She scrambled to her knees and went to him, grasping him by the shoulders.  “Mytho, let me help you.  Please let me help you!”  
     His head was bowed, but it took Aria a moment to realize something was terribly wrong.  Mytho’s shoulders were shaking now, but a strange calm had come over him.  He looked up at her and there was an awful, evil glint in his eyes.   
     He was laughing.   
     “You want to help me?” he laughed again and pulled back his arm.   
     Before she had time to react, to even process what was happening, he’d struck her across the face.  The force of the blow sent her careening sideways and she landed on the hardwood floor again, clutching her stinging cheek.  
     “You should have taken that advice,” Mytho was standing over her now.  No, not Mytho, _the dark prince_.  “You should have run.  Maybe I should show you why.”  Slowly he advanced upon her, a cruel grin spreading over his face.  “Tutu.”

***

     Howling with fury, the storyteller’s deranged spirit looking on through the sands of time surged to his feet and threw his rocking chair with all his might into the void.  “You cunt!” he swore viciously, turning on the gloating shade of the witch.  
     Cundrie shrugged his words away.  “Losing control, old man?”  Her rich laugh cracked across his withered soul.  “The tale isn’t playing out the way you planned, is it?”  
     “You wrote that cloying rhyme into _my_ manuscript, didn’t you!” his accusation carried fire.  
     But the witch’s ice was immune.  “You fixed the scales, _Drosselmeyer._ All I did was even out the balance.”  
     Wrath twisted his features into a thunderous mask.  “You think you can best me, girl?”  Turning toward the sands of time, he reached out one claw-like hand.  “I still have power over the prince.  Even your chicanery can’t expel that.”  He cast a vicious look at his unwelcome guest and closed his hand into a fist.  From the looking glass, a scream shivered over the void and a cruel grin split the spirit’s skeletal face.  “I don’t think you’ll like this next scene at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia: The song for The Ghost Knight was written to the tune of Greensleeves.


	13. Ein Sommernachstraum

 

_**A Midsummer's Night Dream** _

 

     “Mytho?”  
     The dark prince’s laugh as he towered over her sent cold fear washing into the pit of Aria’s stomach.   
     “An odd amalgamation, that,” he drawled nonsensically.  “Mee- _UU-_ toh.”  He laughed.  “One part sacred protector, one part myth.”  
     Aria’s head shook, her whole body quaked with fear.  “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
     Cocking his head, he smiled coldly.  “Of course you don’t, _Tutu._ ”  Slowly he advanced on her.  
     Scrambling backward to keep her distance, Aria felt for the first time true fear not _for_ Mytho, but _of_ him.  The wrongness of it settled like ice in her bones, like fire in her brain.  She refused to believe the person in front of her was Mytho.  His eyes were… wrong.  Everything was wrong.  “How did you know?” she choked past the terror lodged in her throat.  
     “I was there,” he gloated, “In the forest yesterday.  I saw everything.”  
     “If you know I’m Tutu then you know I can help you!”  
     “No!” he roared at her.  “All you’ve done is interfere!”  
     She rolled to her feet and faced him, both hands held out in supplication.  “Mytho, don’t—”  
     It was a futile plea.  In seconds he was upon her.  She put up her hands to fight, but he grasped both her wrists and pinned her to the window at her back with almost inhuman speed and strength.  She opened her mouth to scream, but he locked both her hands in one of his and grabbed her by the throat.  
     “M-Mytho?” she gasped with what little air she had.  She tried to fight against him, thrashing in his grasp.  Her foot hit the bucket of water by the window and the contents sloshed over, splatting drops on the hardwood floor.  
     “You did me a favor returning the last wandering shard of my heart,” _not_ -Mytho purred.  “It’s made me stronger.  Strong enough to do _this_.”  
     His fingers flexed and she gagged.  
     Relaxing his grip, he grinned.  “In fact, there are only a handful of pieces left, and I already know where they are.  The story doesn’t really need Tutu anymore.”  
     “I-if you know where they are, why h-haven’t you retrieved them?”  
     His grin darkened.  “All in due time.”  
     And then his fingers tightened again, and Aria gasped for air.  Alarm bells started ringing in her head as the world began to darken at the edges.  She tried to claw at the hand that held her, tried to kick out at the dark prince that had her pinned.  Her foot hit the bucket of water again.  _Water!_ Oh if only she was Tutu, she could use her powers!  But with not-Mytho’s fingers around her throat she couldn’t do anything.  
     Air.  She needed air.  There was a whole room full of it.  A whole world full of it, and she couldn’t get any.  The bucket at her feet began to shake.  The pendant was buzzing madly against her chest, but its warning meant nothing now.  She already knew where the danger was.  Desperately she struggled against the dark prince’s hold, and as her panic rose, the bucket of water exploded upward.  
     Flinching away, not-Mytho reactively relaxed the grip he had on her throat and Aria wrenched herself free.  Without looking back, she ran for the door, heart pounding in terror.  A hand caught her hair and jerked her painfully backward.  Her neck cracked and she landed on the floor.  While her mind was still catching up, the dark prince tackled her, straddling her chest and pinning her arms over her head again.  His face hovered inches above hers, the weight of his body pressing her against the ground.  She bucked and writhed, and did everything in her power to break away.  Another sharp crack of pain to her cheek and she stilled.  
     “Much better,” not-Mytho purred.  With the hand that hit her he traced a finger along her cheek from her temple to her mouth.  She stopped fighting suddenly with the realization of what he was planning to do.  “No, don’t—”  
     “Isn’t this what you wanted?” he crooned, tracing his finger across her cold lips.  “You wanted to be with the prince, right?  Well he’s right here.”  
     Tears filled her eyes and she struggled weakly against him.  “No, Mytho, don’t!  This isn’t you!  This is the raven’s blood!”  
     He leered down at her.  “Ridiculous little duck.  This is _exactly_ who I was always meant to be.”  He traced his finger down her jaw and the line of her neck.  “It took the raven’s blood to wake me up and realize that.”  
     “M-Mytho…?”  The world blurred through her tears.  She blanched as his wandering hand went lower, one by one undoing the buttons of her blouse, and cringed when he touched her bare skin.  
     “What a waste,” he sighed.  “How can you stand to live in this empty shell?”  Almost idly, he traced his finger to just over her heart.  “Tell me, does it hurt to have this empty, beating thing inside you?”  
_Inside me?_ Aria had to swallow twice to wet her dry mouth enough to reply.  “M-my heart?”  
     Not-Mytho frowned, seeming to speak to himself as he murmured, “What a useless thing.”  And then oddly, he jabbed the tip of his finger into her sternum.  
     What should have just felt like the blunt pain of a finger stabbing against her ribs seemed to sear through her skin, through her bones, straight into the tender flesh of her heart.  It pinned her down with blinding agony and the world went white around her.  The sound of her own scream was a muted, distant thing over the force of the pain that wiped away all thought and sanity.  
     A gloating face seemed to fill her vision, a face she should remember… _“Did you really think you could beat me,_ little duck? _”  
_     And then suddenly his weight on her was gone, and just as suddenly so was the blinding pain.  She stared at the skylight for a moment, reveling in the cool sensation of floating in her own skin free of agony.  It took her several long seconds to realize she was gasping at air as if she’d been drowning seconds before.  
     “Don’t touch her!” Another voice pounded in her ears, breaking her spell of peace.  
     Aria rolled over and sat up, astonished to see Fakhir—still in his ghost knight regalia—standing between her and the _thing_ that she was still refusing to think of as Mytho.  The dark prince was on one knee, bracing himself on the floor with his right hand, wiping blood from his face with his left.  He rolled cunning eyes up at Fakhir.  “Are you going to stop me?” he mocked.  
     “Yes!” Fakhir growled back.  He looked at Aria over his shoulder.  “Did he hurt you?”  The threat implicit in his question was clear.  
     Aria, frantically doing her blouse back up, could only mutely shake her head.  Which was a lie… and wasn’t.  It had felt like he was stabbing her through the heart, except there was no mark, nor more pain.  She wasn’t even bleeding.  _What the holy pink pointe shoe just happened?  
_     “We’re going,” Fakhir hissed at the dark prince.  And despite the violence in his expression, his hands were gentle when he helped Aria to her feet.  
     “That’s alright _Tutu_ ,” not-Mytho called to her, false sweetness in his words.  “We’ll catch up later.”  
     Fakhir stiffened but didn’t turn back.  “He knows?”  
     “Apparently,” she muttered, still moving toward the door.  She just wanted to get out of there.  She’d worry about Mytho and what he’d said… _and done…_ later.  She couldn’t quite suppress the shudder of revulsion which ran through her.  
     Fakhir wrapped a strangely protective arm around her shoulders.  “If you ever touch her again, I’ll kill you myself,” he hissed.  And on that ominous warning he led her out of the studio.  He didn’t say another word to her until they were downstairs.  Then grasping her by the shoulders he faced her.  “Are you sure he didn’t hurt you?”  
     Aria nodded again, rubbing the spot over her heart where the memory of pain remained like a phantom.  “I-I don’t know what he did.  But it—” _hurt like hell,_ “it’s gone now.”  
     With one hand he grasped her chin, turned her face to the light, and examined the marks Mytho’s hand had left there.  His expression hardened.  “I see.”  He started to go back to the stairs, murder in his eyes.  
     “No!” Aria grabbed his arm and hauled him back.  “I’m fine!”  
     Fakhir was still staring at the staircase.  He raked a hand through his hair agitatedly.  “Mytho isn’t.”  In a sudden outburst of rage, he punched the wall.  “Damn it!”  
     Aria wrapped her arms around herself.  
     Fighting visibly to reign his fury in, Fakhir faced her again.  “Aria—”  
     “He said I’d returned all the wandering shards of his heart,” she spoke quickly.  “That there are only a few pieces left, and he already knows where they are.”  Tears burned her eyes and she blinked them quickly away.  “He said the story doesn’t n-need Tutu anymore.”  
     Fakhir’s whole demeanor gentled.  “That isn’t true,” he assured her.  “ _That guy,_ ” he nodded toward the stairs with an expression of disgust, “may have said otherwise, but the _real_ Mytho needs you.  In fact, you may be the only person who can save him now.”  
     In her distress she missed the self-loathing in his words, nodding quickly and averting her gaze from his face. If he kept being nice to her, she just might cry, and wouldn’t that horrify him?  She stared at his chest instead, blinking fast to clear the burning tears.  And then she began to laugh.  Her laughter rose, wiping out her need for tears, and Fakhir’s expression shifted to worry.  He probably thought she was mad, but she pointed at what he was wearing.  “That’s what Elfriede thought a ghost knight looks like?”  
     Catching on, he grimaced down at the heavily embellished, slashed velvet doublet.  “It wasn’t my choice.”  
     Aria only laughed harder, doubling over in her on-the-point-of-hysteria mirth.  “You know you look like a popinjay?”  
     He growled at her, but the effect was muted at best by the stage frippery.  He glanced to the  locker room, clearly uncomfortable and ready to be back in his own clothes.  “Will you be alright out here?”  
     Wiping tears of amusement from her eyes, she nodded.  “I’m pretty sure I heard the door upstairs.  Mytho, or _not-_ Mytho, is gone.”  
     Cheeks dark with either residual anger or embarrassment, he spun on his heel and hit the locker room door muttering something about girls.  She was fairly certain it was something nasty.  
     While she waited for him, she wandered over to the mirror and squinted at her reflection.  Her hair was mussed, and she combed it out with her fingers—not that that seemed to make it better.  There were smarting red marks on both her cheeks that might or might not be bruises tomorrow, but just looked like sunburn right now.   
     Looking around to make sure no one was watching, she unbuttoned the first few buttons of her blouse.  Her chest still ached with something not quite pain, more like the memory of sensation, and she wondered if she’d have a bruise there too.  But when she opened her blouse to reveal the patch of skin over her heart, it wasn’t a bruise she saw.  All the blood drained out of her face.  
     Right under where her pendant usually lay, where before there had only ever been unblemished skin, was now a perfectly round, shiny white scar.

***

     Fakhir still wasn’t sure what it was he’d walked in on in the ballet school when he’d heard Aria’s scream, and the girl walking silently beside him wasn’t exactly talking about it.  In fact, she hadn’t said much since he’d changed.  Strangely subdued, she’d walked wordlessly beside him all the way back to the school dorms.  The gates rose before them now, and she barely seemed to notice where they were.  And he couldn’t begrudge her silence after what he’d seen.  
     The mere thought of it filled him with a cold fury, and a nameless horror at the idea that he was almost too late.  That image of Mytho holding Aria down as she screamed was burned in his memory, and no matter how hard he tried to blot it away he couldn’t forget.  Nor could he forget the force of the great anger which had overtaken him.  It should have been impossible for him to pick Mytho up and toss him across the room as easily as he had.  But he’d done it.  For her.  
     It should have seemed unnatural to punch his best friend in the face.  But he’d done it.  For her.  
     “You okay?”  
     Startling, Aria seemed to come out of her own head and look around.  “Oh!  We’re here.”  
     “We’ve been standing here for two minutes,” he informed her.  
     Aria blushed.  “Sorry, I’m just a little… distracted.”  
     Without even knowing why he did it, Fakhir reached out and brushed a wayward curl off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.  Her eyes widened, and he scowled at himself for his own idiocy.  “If you’re alright, I should get back.  I owe Kyron some time in the smithy.”  
     “Of course.”  She turned toward the gates, stopped, stood there for a second, and then turned back to him.  Rubbing a hand idly against her chest, Aria offered him a heartbreaking smile, her eyes shining suspiciously.  “Thank you, Fakhir.”  
_Oh hell._ Again without knowing why, without even considering it or consciously choosing to do so, Fakhir walked right up to the girl and wrapped his arms around her.  The hug was brief, his own discomfort at his actions when his mind caught up to his instincts causing him to step quickly away.   
     “What was that for?”  
     “Idiot,” he swore under his breath.  
     The smile she flashed at him that time could outshine the sun.  Then she turned and practically skipped through the gates toward her dorm.  
     Fakhir caught himself watching her and grimaced, forcing himself to turn away.  Only a few weeks ago he’d made it his life’s mission to stop Princess Tutu and protect Mytho by any means necessary.  And now?  Now everything was upside down.  Now he wanted to stop Mytho and save her.  And he didn’t know why.  Or maybe he did.  After all, if he was the knight of the story then it was his duty to protect the prince.  Short of that, it was his duty to protect the things the prince loved.  Right?  And no matter what he’d seen today in that studio, Mytho loved Tutu.   
_She’s his princess.  
__His_ princess.  
     And Fakhir couldn’t forget that.

***

     Aria woke to the sound of excited squealing and the hideous dissonance of multiple hands pounding arrhythmically on her door.  She groaned and wrapped her arms around her head.  “Go away!”  
     “Duck!  Duck!  Duck!” the voices on the other side chanted over each other.  The only thing Aria could discern in their excited babble was her name.   
     She groaned again when she realized they weren’t giving up.  Climbing stiffly out of her loft, she opened the door to her two overly excited best friends.  “What?” she snapped.  
     “Sheesh, cranky pants,” Piqué teased her.  “I’d think you’d be in a better mood this morning.”  
     “Yeah, especially since the letter worked!” Lillie squealed.  The end of her sentence soared up into pitches only bats could hear.  
     Aria furrowed her brow, “What are you going on about?”  
     “You and Fakhir are a couple!”  Now Piqué was bouncing up and down on her toes.  She grabbed Aria’s hand, and Lillie grabbed the other one, and bouncing up and down they pulled her into a bouncy little circle right there in the hallway.   
     “What?” she squeaked, her own voice reaching bat range.  “Where did you hear that?”  
     “It’s all over the dorms!  Everyone knows!  Esmeralda saw you and Fakhir hugging yesterday and she told _everyone._ Heidi has been on a rampage, you should probably steer clear of her for a while.  She was throwing things all night and screaming.  I think she may have something for Fakhir—them being pas de deux partners and all—but you got to him first!”  Lillie gave this report in the rapid-fire gushing way she had when overexcited.  
     Aria’s stomach dropped to her feet.  
     “Oh, I think you should rub old sloth-face’s snubbed nose in it!” Piqué encouraged.  “It would serve that witch well to get a taste of her own medicine.”  
_Sheesh, doesn’t anyone have anything better to do around here than gossip?  
_     “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.”  Aria pulled away from both of them and hurried to put the brakes on this runaway train.  “It isn’t like that!  We’re just friends.  He was—” he was what, exactly?  It’s not like she could tell her friends what had happened yesterday or why Fakhir was being so nice to her.  She shuddered to even remember it.  
     “You’re friends with Fakhir!” Lillie gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as her voice notched up another several octaves.  
     “That’s an even bigger deal!” Piqué exclaimed.  
     “Wait, huh?”  
     “Fakhir isn’t friends with anyone.”  Lillie explained.  “Except Mytho, but not anymore I guess.  I mean, he’s so antisocial.”  
     “Yeah, I can see him going out with you, that’s one thing,” Piqué grudged, “but friends?  That’s altogether a different matter entirely.”  
     “Man, when this gets out, can you imagine what people will say?”   
     “Wait,” Aria shook her head, “When this gets out?  Why does it have to get out?  Can’t we just keep it between us?”  
     “Either way people are going to be talking about it,” Piqué shrugged.  “You’re either his friend or his girlfriend.”  
     Oh boy.  Aria groaned.  _When Fakhir hears about this he’s going to kill me._    
     “You really shouldn’t be friends with someone like him anyway,” Lillie shook her head.  “I won’t allow it.”  
     Aria blinked a double take.  “Why not?”  
     “Being friends with a boy like Fakhir is bad for a girl’s reputation, don’t you know that?” Piqué sighed tragically.  
     “Really?”  Aria drawled dryly.  “It’s okay for me to date him, but not okay to be friends with him?  That makes absolutely no sense.”  
     “Well of course it does,” Piqué scoffed.  “If you’re dating him, it would mean he really likes you.  Or likes you enough to admit to other people that he knows you, which for Fakhir, would mean he really likes you.”  
     There was something vaguely insulting about that statement that Aria couldn’t quite put her finger on.  
     “…but if he’s just friends with you, and not dating you, then everyone’s going to think he’s either using you, or you’re becoming a juvenile delinquent too.”  
     Aria stared at her.  Then, without saying a word, she stepped back into her room and closed the door in their faces.  _Good friends, but weird,_ she reminded herself, taking a slow calming breath.  _Definitely weird.  
_     Though they did bring up an excellent point.  The letter Lillie wrote was still out there somewhere.  In all the confusion yesterday, she’d completely forgotten about it.  But if the ostensible Miss Bottom was as true to her word as she professed, then the letter would be duly delivered.  And if it was bad enough that _everyone_ was talking about them, it’d be even worse if everyone was talking about them _and_ that letter was delivered.  Fakhir hadn’t gotten it yesterday, of that much she was certain.  Which meant she had to get to it first _today_.

 

     The literature department was doing poetry readings on the main stage when Aria arrived on campus, and it looked like they’d chased most of the onlookers away with odious renditions of Schiller, Hugo, and Keats.  She bypassed that ongoing disaster, and headed toward where the art students had set up their fanciful Midsummer’s Night Dream exhibition, transforming the corner of the quad between the library and the ballet school into a faery paradise.  _Surely she must be here!_ Aria chewed her lip nervously.  “Unless she’s already delivering letters…”  
     Circling an elaborate sculpture, Aria spotted a tall girl wearing half a donkey costume.  “That’s her!”  Hoping against hope that Gold Crown’s own version of cupid still had Lillie’s letter, Aria hurried over.   
     The girl looked up with half a smile forming on her face as Aria approached.           
     “Are you Miss Bottom?” she blurted out.  
     “Nope!” the girl answered airily, “There’s no Miss Bottom here, I don’t know what you’re—” dropping her chin she stared down at the bottom half of the costume she wore and a big grin broke out on her face.  “Oh, I guess you found me out.”  
     General laughter tittered among the other art students tending their displays.  
     The girl offered a non-donkey like hand.  “I’m Hermia,” she introduced herself.   
     “Oh!  Um, I’m Aria,” sheepishly she took the girl’s hand in a light shake.  “But everyone calls me Duck.”  
     “Well,” Hermia patted the donkey head of her costume sitting on an artfully vine-covered bench beside her.  “Sometimes I’m called Bottom.”  With a flourish, she sketched a copy of an elaborate bow and winked.  “But don’t tell anyone.  No one knows who Miss Bottom is, and we’re trying to keep it that way.  It’s more fun like this.  Don’t worry, I’ll make sure your letter gets delivered.”  
     “Oh, no!” Aria’s cheeks heated, “That’s why I tracked you down.  It’s not my letter.  My friend wrote it for me, but she’s kind of got the wrong idea about which person I like so…”  
     “Oh!”  Hermia’s eyes rounded.  “That’s not good.”  
     Aria wrung her hands together, “So do you still have it?”  
     Hermia’s brow scrunched, “Let me check.”  She glanced around, “Hey Tobias?  Are you still sorting the letters?”  
     A boy sitting at a table covered in charcoal sketches looked up.  “Sure, who are you looking for?”  
     Hermia glanced expectantly at Aria.  
     Cheeks flaming hotter, she toed the ground as she answered in a barely discernable whisper.  “Fakhir.”  
     To Hermia’s credit she didn’t laugh, mock, or tease.  Instead she turned to Tobias with an imperious look, “Do you have any for Mr. Suziere?”  
     “Uh…” the charcoal artist sifted through the stacks of envelopes he was counting out.  “Yeah, I’ve got three.”  
_Three?_ Aria’s stomach clenched.  Who was sending Fakhir love notes?  
     “Don’t worry,” Hermia smiled at her reassuringly.  “We deliver in the strictest confidence.  What’s the letter look like?”  
     “Um…” she searched her memory.  “It was written on parchment stationary and the envelope has an embossed lily on the flap.”  
     “Got it,” Tobias held it out to her.  
     Still blushing furiously, Aria yanked it out of his grasp and shoved it into her pocket.  “Thanks, that would have been really embarrassing.”  And now that she knew Fakhir was getting love notes from other girls, it was even _more_ embarrassing.  And oddly unsettling.  
     “Is there anyone you’d like to write a letter to?” Hermia asked gently, clearly trying to assuage her embarrassment.  
     Immediately her cheeks cooled.  
     She’d checked in the mirror this morning after leaving Piqué and Lillie in the hall.  Not-Mytho’s hand hadn’t left bruises on her cheeks as she’d though it might.  But the strange scar didn’t go anywhere overnight.  Absently, she rubbed at her chest while she shook her head.  “No,” she murmured.  “Circumstances prevent me from confessing my love.”  _A lot of circumstances.  
_     “Yeah,” Hermia’s eyes went distant and she looked out over the Midsummer’s Night exhibition.  Aria followed her gaze and saw a broad-shouldered boy working with another student to reposition a cast bronze statue of the faery queen.  “I know a thing or two about unrequited love.”  
     “You like him?” Aria asked, her curiosity outpacing her propriety.  
     It was Hermia’s turn to blush.  “Who?  Lysander?”  She shook her head a little too quickly.  “No, no, definitely not, I don’t—” she broke off and her shoulders slumped.  Nervously, she looked around, but no one was paying any attention to them as they worked.  “Don’t tell anyone.”  
     “Of course not!”   
     Hermia’s eyes brightened a little.  “He made all these statues,” she boasted, nodding around to the Shakespearean characters brought to life in cast bronze.  Most of them were sitting on marble plinths scattered through the display, each statue no more than eighteen inches in height.  But the faery queen at the center of the little court the art students had created was life sized.  “He’s really good, don’t you think?”  
     Aria examined the Bottom statue with its donkey ears, and although she didn’t know anything about art, even she could tell it was good.   
     Hermia gazed at the faery queen.  “You can tell just by looking at her, he must have been thinking of someone special when he cast her.”  
     Tilting her head and squinting, Aria stared at it.  “It could have been you,” she ventured.  
     “No, no, definitely not.  I know myself better than anyone so,” she blushed hotly and shook her head, toying nervously with the furry ears of her donkey mask.   
_Huh._ As Miss Bottom, Hermia seemed to have absolutely no inhibitions.  But as herself…  
_I kind of feel like that too.  As Tutu I can do anything._ But yesterday, she couldn’t even fight for herself.  Rubbing her chest again, she forced the thoughts away.  “Why don’t you write him a letter?”  
     Hermia looked at her askance.  
     Aria shrugged.  “You deliver everyone else’s letters.  You could deliver your own too.”  
     “Here you go Bottom!”   
     The moment was broken when Tobias walked up and pushed a bundle of sorted letters into Hermia’s arms.   
     “And this,” he added, hefting a large package that contained even more letters than what she already held.  He rolled his eyes in disgust, “Mytho’s daily delivery.”  
     “Hey!” she exclaimed, nodding toward Aria.  “Confidentiality!”  
     Tobias gave her a toothy grin.  “Don’t tell anyone, but Mytho has gotten a load like that every day this week.  Each bigger than the last.  I honestly don’t get what it is all you girls see in him.”  
     Hermia sighed exasperatedly.   
     Feeling cold inside and out, Aria stared at the package of _Mytho’s_ letters.  “You must see him every day,” she murmured numbly.  “Is he—” _is he the same as he was yesterday?  Violent and… wrong?  
_     “Actually. He usually finds me,” Hermia replied, ignorant of Aria’s thoughts.  She scowled at the package Tobias held.  “Which means Bottom is going to have to haul that load around all day until he deigns to show up.”  
     “Yep,” Tobias clapped her on the shoulder, “have fun!”  
     Hermia scowled at her fellow art student.  “Excuse me,” she muttered, setting aside the letters while she donned her donkey head.  “Duty calls.”  
     As Hermia—or rather _Miss Bottom—_ trotted away, Aria rubbed her chest again.  Her vaguely unsettled feeling returned, an antsy energy taking up residence in her bones.  Although she had no reason to stay on campus for the showcase, Aria found herself wandering around through the various student displays.  She didn’t really see any of them, but when she tried to leave campus, her own feet seemed to lead her back.   
     She saw Piqué and Lillie come and go for their final fittings and rehearsals.  She glimpsed Rue through the ballet school windows, practicing her Giselle piece for tomorrow’s grand finale.  She listened to the end of the literature student’s readings, and the grateful clapping of those still sticking around in the main stage’s audience as they quit the stage.  She watched as the music department began setting up for the symphony that would cap the showcase’s second evening.   
     “Out of the way,” one rude boy in glasses snapped at her as he headed to the stage.  She recognized him as the one who’d translated the Latin book for her.  His manners hadn’t improved.  
     A conversation reached her ears among the girls setting chairs on the stage.  “Honestly,” one was saying, “is there any girl he’s _not_ going to go out with?”  
     “As long as he gets around to me, I’m okay with it,” the other giggled.  
     “You hussy,” a third teased.   
     The boy in the glasses snapped at all three of them, “Aren’t you finished yet?”  
     “Oh give it up, Autor!” the first one snapped back, hands on her hips.  “You’re such a prima donna.”  
     He sniffed at them and turned back to whatever he was doing.  
     “So who’s he with this time?”  The girls went right back to their gossiping.  
     “That donkey girl.  Bottom.”  
     “Oh come on!” the self-proclaimed hussy huffed.  “He’d rather go out with _that_ beansprout than _me?”  
_     Aria’s pendant began to buzz against her chest.  
     The first girl shrugged, “I saw them holding hands heading toward that grove behind school…”  
     The rest of the girl’s story faded into the rushing sound of wind.  Aria didn’t even realize she was running until she closed her fist around the vibrating pendant and pushed through the Midsummer display toward the grove the girls indicated.   _This must be why I couldn’t leave school today,_ she realized.  _Mytho must be after Hermia’s heart!  She loves Lysander, I’m sure of that.  She wouldn’t go out with Mytho.  
_     Reaching the trees, she prevaricated for a moment over which way to go, then trusting to the frantically buzzing pendant and her own instincts, picked a direction at random and raced on.  As always seemed to be the case, whatever strange link connected her pendant to Mytho or the shards of Mytho’s heart led her straight to him.  
     She found them near the edge of campus where the trees backed up to the edge of the service road which ran along the back of the school against the city wall.  Mytho was standing in the road smiling down at Hermia, who’d changed out of her Bottom costume and back into her school uniform.  He was holding the package of letters Aria had seen that morning.   
     “Did you know I was Bottom the Donkey all along?” Hermia asked in a breathy voice that sounded nothing like the girl Aria had spoken to.  
     An oily smile slithered over the prince’s face.  He tossed the letters aside and advanced a step toward her.  “You’re the only one I’ve been looking at all this time.  I know everything.”  He cocked his head at her.  “I know you like Lysander.  I know he doesn’t even seem to see you in return.”  
     Her chin quivered at the cruel words.  
     “If you were my princess, I wouldn’t ever be able to look away.”  
     Aria frowned.  _That was actually kind of a good line._ She shook her head as though to clear it.  _I’m not letting him get away with this again!  
_     “I don’t think so!” A harsh voice whispered at her back.  
     Aria spun to find herself facing _Krähe_.  The crow princess launched herself at Aria bodily, tackling her to the ground beneath the underbrush lining the roadway.  She clapped a hand over Aria’s mouth and pressed a feather-shaped blade against her throat.   
     “My father needs a heart,” Krähe hissed almost soundlessly.  “I won’t let you stop us now.” _  
_     Frantically, Aria turned her head enough to see Mytho with Hermia.  
     “Be mine and mine alone, Hermia,” he was saying.  
     Aria could feel Krähe flinch at his words, but the hand holding the knife to her throat didn’t waver.  
     Hermia blinked at Mytho, a haze seeming to lift from her eyes.  “No, I—”  
     He advanced again, close enough this time to draw the shaking girl into his arms.  Aria’s own skin shivered in empathy and she squirmed, trying to get free.  The blade of Krähe’s knife pricked her skin and she stilled.   
     “Not another inch,” Krähe warned.  
     Mytho and Hermia’s voices filtered to them through the leaves of the underbrush hiding them from view.  
     “You don’t have the courage to confess your own love,” Mytho murmured, “you’re delivering other people’s letters just to fool yourself.”  
     “You’re wrong, that’s not what I—”  
     “You make it look like goodwill, but it’s all for yourself.  Let’s be honest.”  
     “I—”  
     “But it’s okay to be selfish, Hermia.”  
     Straining again, Aria craned to see.  
     Hermia blinked at him.  “What?”  
     Mytho smiled and traced a finger over her lips, and before Aria could risk slitting her own throat on Krähe’s blade to stop him, he pressed his mouth over hers.  The girl fought at first… and then she didn’t.  
     “Because everybody else is just using you too,” Mytho murmured to her. “You might as well focus exclusively on yourself from now on.  If you love me, you won’t have to fool yourself anymore.  Love only me and hate everyone else.”  
     Hermia’s eyes glazed over.  “Yes.  I will love only you Mytho, and I will hate everyone else from now on.”  
     The smile that bared Mytho’s teeth made Aria’s blood turn to ice.  “Then as proof you’ll give me your beautiful heart, won’t you?”  
     “I will.”  
_No!  
_     Stepping back, Mytho spread his arms and transformed into the dark prince.  At his feet the black altar rose from the earth, lifting him up while dark wings seemed to spring from his back.  “Then come!  Dance into my arms and give me your heart!”  
_No!  No!  No!  
_     The same panic which had filled Aria in the main studio filled her now.  She was surrounded by trees, by shrubs, by growing leafy things and if only she had Tutu’s powers, she could free herself of Krähe and save Hermia!  But with the knife at her throat she couldn’t transform.  Except, she _hadn’t_ transformed yesterday, and the bucket of water still exploded.  _Did I do that?  I couldn’t, could I?  Only Tutu has that power.  But I am Tutu, aren’t I?  Or am I?_ Or does it even matter?  
     Beyond where she was pinned to the forest floor, Hermia was waltzing a slow dance toward the dark prince.  “I’m sick of being the go-between for other people.  I will act for my own sake.  For Mytho’s sake.”  
     “That’s it,” the dark prince urged, “Yes.  Come and sacrifice your life for my sake.”  
_“No!”  
_     Though the word was muffled by Krähe’s hand over her mouth, there was no muffling the unmistakable burst of power which rushed out of her.  Nor was there any mistaking the ropes of vines that seized Krähe and dragged her away.  Without wasting time wondering how she’d done it, Aria jumped up and transformed into Tutu.  Bursting onto the road, Tutu put herself between Hermia and the dark altar.  “Don’t go over there,” she implored.  
     Hermia’s glazed eyes blinked at her.  “Are you going to interfere?” she asked, the words strangely mimicking the very thing not-Mytho accused her of.  
     Tutu took a breath and raised up en pointe, swirling her hands into the mime for dance.  _I can’t think of that right now.  I can’t doubt myself.  Not if I want to save Hermia._   “Please dance with me, Miss Hermia.”  
     Fear filled the art student’s eyes.  “Dance with you?”  
     “Hermia!” the dark prince commanded from the height of his gory altar.  “Hurry and come here!  Give me your love now, I demand it!”  
     Hermia’s face blanked again.  “Yes,” she turned dreamily toward him.  “I’m coming.”  
     At her feet, the crow…things… appeared and lifted her into the air, bearing her forth in what Tutu now understood was the grimmest of sacrifices.  
     “Good, my loyal maid,” the dark prince purred.  “Here, come into my arms.”  His eyes met Tutu’s and seemed to gloat.  
     Swallowing back anger, Tutu moved into the dance of the swan.  “Miss Hermia, is that really alright?  Is it alright to end your love without ever having said _anything_?”  
     “It’s fine!” Mytho insisted.  “You can just throw away a meaningless love like that.”  
     “Yes,” Tutu mocked him, “Such a love should be _cast aside._ ”  She shot him a glare, then turned her attention back to the doomed girl.“That’s not true, Hermia and you know it.  Why else would you volunteer to deliver the feelings of others to the ones they care for?”  She moved her arms gracefully through the air in an expression of flying, her pointe shoes seeming to float over the packed earth of the road.  “Your love isn’t meaningless.  It’s precious.  It’s still love whether you speak it or not.  But if that really is a precious feeling, it would only be cruel for you to throw it away.”  
     Oddly, her wayward thoughts strayed to the letter Lillie had written to Fakhir.  The one she’d tried to throw away, but was still tucked into her jacket pocket.  Squashing that thought, Tutu jerked her mind back to the more important matter at hand of saving the girl.   
     “I may not be able to confess my love, but you can.  I don’t want you to hide that feeling.  I want you to tell it to the one you care for!”  
     Hermia’s eyes opened and stared unseeing into space.  “Yes,” she whispered, a single tear sliding across her temple.  “That’s right.  I haven’t—I haven’t told Lysander anything about this yet.  About my feelings.  I haven’t even tried.”  
     “Yes!” Tutu exclaimed.  She reached out and grasped Hermia’s extended hand, gently drawing her down.  The crow…things… faded into the earth like so much ash and shadow.  “Yes, the feeling that has grown to the bursting point inside you, _that_ is real love!”  
     On the dark altar, something in Mytho’s eyes seemed to shatter.  The wings at his back disappeared like mist.  “That’s right,” he choked out, clutching at his heart in sudden pain.  Tutu felt a sharp blow like a knife into her own chest.  “What you’re seeking is false love.  It’s counterfeit love.”  He looked out at them, falling to his knees on the altar.  “Tutu—”  
     Aria watched in horror as shadows filled the prince’s eyes again.  
     “Shut up!” he raged at himself.  “What is real love?  If the love I’m seeking is false love, then all the love in the world must be false!”  Clutching at his chest with both hands now, the black altar swirled into darkness and when it cleared Mytho was gone.  
     “Lysander,” Hermia mumbled, before her eyes rolled up and she collapsed senseless into Tutu’s arms.

***

     “That didn’t go as expected.”  
     Drosselmeyer’s spirit shot a glare of hatred at his unwelcome guest from his vantage point inside his own personal hell.  “Don’t you have an afterlife to move onto?” he groused, rocking his chair agitatedly.  
     The ghost of the witch smirked back.  “In time.  For now I find it more entertaining to torment you in yours.”  
     “Ha!” he cracked his spectral knuckles and fixed his attention unblinkingly on the thinning sands of time.  “Or maybe you can’t?” he ventured cruelly.  “Witches who don’t know what they’re doing shouldn’t play with curses.”  
     “And storytellers who write tragedies shouldn’t be surprised when the tragedy of the story becomes their own unhappy demise.”  
     He grunted at her irritably.  
     “You really should be more careful with your characters,” she warned.  “After all, you wrote that prince to hate the raven.  Do you really think that—even if he could get his hands on a heart—he won’t be just as likely to use it as bait to slit the _raven’s_ throat as he would be to gift it?  After all, age-old enmity’s always run fresh.”  
     “Listen here you cunt!” the spirit spun to face her… but once again as with his old enemy, there was no one there.  He blinked.  “I didn’t imagine her,” he convinced himself.  “I didn’t.”  He turned back to the sands of time and couldn’t quite lose the feeling that maybe he _had_ spent far too long in this lightless void.  Maybe the price of the power he was expending to control the story _was_ his sanity.  
     He glared at the useless little duck reflected in the sands of time.  He didn’t want to admit even the _possibility_ of weakness to himself.  But he couldn’t pretend to not see the widening cracks in the surface of the looking glass.  Nor did he want to admit that, all alone here in his own personalized purgatory, he missed his old puppet.   
_Oh Edel._ He sighed and rocked on, feeling his tenuous control over the story slipping even now.  _You were a useful puppet._ He grimaced bleakly.  _Until you weren’t.  
_     He couldn’t wait any longer.  He’d lost too much power, and wasted even more controlling the prince as he had.  The little duck should never have been able to use Tutu's powers like that.  More proof to the point that he was weakening.  The raven needed a heart.  _Now._


	14. Rätselmärchen

_**A Riddling Tale** _

 

     It was a shell-shocked group that returned to the King’s Cathedral together.  Mytho carried the limp body of the child while his knight half-supported the weight of his… _wife._ He shook his head.  How could he have known the man all these many years, fought _two_ wars together, and never known?  
     He blinked.  
     Freezing at the realization of where he was again, Mytho turned a circle where he stood, trying to memorize the image of this place.  The square he stood in _looked_ like St. Godfrey’s square—minus the bodies and destruction.  The town _looked_ like Goldkrone.  And didn’t.  Many of the faces surrounding him were similar, but not quite right.  _Memory._ Or fantasy.  Or… his eyes  fell to  the girl, looking even more stunned than the rest of them at what she’d apparently done.  _Maybe a wish of what could have been.  
_     It didn’t matter.  This strange dream with its war and death and magic was infinitely better than the tormented darkness that waited for him in the waking world.  He wanted to stay here in this little fiction, this _story,_ and never wake again.  
     “Sire?” his knight’s weary voice drew him back to the moment.  
     Nodding, Mytho bore the small, sleeping boy up the steps of the cathedral and handed him over to a waiting pair of arms.  A soft sound of sobs echoed from the nave of the church.  The mournful hymn brought him up short and he stood there for a minute looking around at the faces of the people he’d failed to protect.  They blurred together in his mind.  His own people who’d resided in the protection of these walls for over a thousand years.  The refugees of a war that should never have to be fought whom he’d chosen to hide here.  This place was supposed to be a sanctuary.  
_Sanctuary?  
_     His mind blanked.  
     Turning to the woman, Mytho sighed.  “Tell me how to defeat the raven.”  
     “Yes,” her head shook as if trying to clear and refocus.  Mytho felt that way himself, and he wasn’t sure how much of that was exhaustion and how much was his own broken mind trying to connect the things he felt he _should_ remember.  
     Reaching into a pocket of her dress, the woman pulled out a slim scroll.  “He’s impossible to kill,” she explained.  “Many have tried.  _You_ have tried—” she broke off, staring up at him with wide eyes.   
     “I know who he really is,” Mytho assured her tiredly.  He blinked again.  _I do?_ Struggling against his own shattered mind he tried to find the information… and failed.  
     The woman bit her lip.  “I can’t kill him.  But I can trap him.  This curse,” she held the scroll out.  “I wrote it with his own ink, he’s bound to it.  But I have to speak the final word within his hearing.”  
     “Why haven’t you used it, then?” his knight asked harshly.  
     She blinked tears away, refusing to look at her… _husband.  
_     Mytho sighed wearily.  
     “Trapping him isn’t enough, I fear.  But with the blood of the heir I could seal it, and for as long as the Undying King’s line lives, he’d never be able to break free of it.”  
     Mytho felt the words like blows, and he opened his mouth to respond.  
     Screams filled the church, and a great commotion came from the door to the abbey.  Beside Mytho, the girl’s hands flew to her mouth in fright.  
     Spinning to face whatever new threat faced his people, Mytho froze.  His knight cursed, and beside the man, the woman had gone dead white.  
     Doing nothing more than standing in the door to the abbey was a very pale, very _dead_ woman.  
     “Anya?” his knight’s wife whispered almost silently.  
     The knight swore.  “Sire, is that—”  
     “Yes,” he murmured in awe.  He cast a look at the woman.  “Von Rothbart is the raven?  You’re sure?”  
     “Yes,” the girl answered instead.  She’d wrapped her arms around herself.  “I-I heard him in the council chambers.  I-I forgot in everything that happened after.”  
     The woman nodded gravely.  “I swear it, sire.”  
     His face tightened.  “Then what is his dead wife doing here?”  
     His knight sheathed the sword he’d reactively drawn.  “Why don’t we find out?”  
     The girl started forward with them, but Mytho held her back.  Something… something told him to keep her far away from this.  Something he couldn’t recall.  “Stay,” he ordered.  He pushed her toward a pew.  “Rest.”  
     She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.  “Twice now you’ve done the impossible.  Sit before you fall down,” he ordered under his breath where no one else could hear.  
     As sullenly as a child she plopped down in a pew, and he had a sudden flash of her as a little girl, chubby face scrunched up, lower lip jutting out and her little arms crossed stubbornly over her chest refusing to do as he said.  The vision/memory/fantasy cut him with a flash of bittersweet pain.  
     Swallowing hard, he turned away and joined his knight and the woman as they crossed the church to where the ghost of a dead lady waited expectantly.  He didn’t miss the fact that as they approached, her spectral eyes never once left his face.  She said nothing when they stopped before her, merely dipped her head once in recognition, then turned and walked back into the abbey.  
     Trading glances, he and the knight both settled their hands on their weapons and followed her.   
     The ghost said nothing as she led them into the warren of the religious’ living quarters, then down a narrow corridor that ended in a steep set of stairs.  
     “The catacombs,” the woman realized.

     Mytho took a breath, knowing this could be a bad idea, and descending after the ghost anyway.  It didn’t take long for him to realize where she was taking them.   
     “Sire,” his knight caught him back when he would have followed her right up to the sealed door of a tomb.  “That is the King’s resting place.”  
     Mytho sighed.  “You and I both know he’s not in there.”  Another flash of something… a memory in a dream.  A crowd of people surrounding the body of a man cut down in his prime.  A vow made in death.  _“Protect… my soul.”  
_     Mytho blinked.   
     Pulling away from his knight, he followed the ghost right up to the door of the King’s tomb.  “Why did you bring us here?”  
     She nodded toward the door, then walked through it.  
     Swallowing back a curse, Mytho reached for the door to the tomb.  It was locked.  He sighed again.  The last thing he wanted to do was start breaking down doors in the catacombs.  These walls held secrets even he feared to disturb.  
     “S-sire?”  Shaking, the woman approached him.  She reached into her pocket and withdrew… a key.  
     He stared at it, then at her.  “You have a key to the King’s Tomb?”  
     She nodded toward the Lady von Rothbart, tears filling her eyes.  “My a-anya was its keeper.”  
     His knight swore and spun away, running an agitated hand through his hair as silent tears streamed down the woman’s face.  
     Without saying a word or meeting her eyes, Mytho took the key and turned back to the door.  He inserted it into the lock and the door clicked open.  Taking a breath, he warned the other two, “Stay here.”  
     Inside the tomb the only light came from the glow that he summoned to cast the shadows from this place, and the shimmering form of the ghost.  She nodded toward one of a twinned pair of tombs.   
     Gathering his courage, Mytho stepped forward and shoved the stone lid aside.  Within the dark tomb his eyes caught on a flash of light, and he stared down into the shadows to behold a swan-hilted sword.  _The King’s sword._   His eyes met those of the ghost.  “Why?”   
     He didn’t actually expect an answer.  The dead don’t talk.  
     Except now.  
     Seeming to sound from the very stones of the room, the words came to him.  _“This power is forbidden, granted only to the Heir of the King.”  
_     He blanched, realizing not from his memory in this dream what she was talking about, but from his memory of the story in the waking world.  “You want me to shatter my heart?”  Realization settled into his bones.  He didn’t want to see the next part of this dream.  He already knew how it would end.  _Because I can’t destroy the raven with this power any more than I can seal him away with that scroll.  At best I can curse us both to some distant purgatory to fight each other forever, or perish in the effort and curse this world to his tyranny._ His mind turned to the girl upstairs who’d wielded the power of life and death.  No.  He couldn’t destroy the raven.  He could only curse them both.  Because… _I’m not the heir anymore.  
_     He stared at the sword and shook his head.  “No.  I can’t.”  
_“You have to stop him,”_ the stones answered for her.  She reached into the tomb, and ghost or no ghost, lifted out the sword and pressed it into his shaking hands.  _“Stop him, Siegfried, by whatever means necessary.”_

             
     Mytho woke from the dream, sitting bolt upright in shock.  The dream, or fantasy, or memory faded as he looked around in confusion.  He was lying in his own bed… the sheets strewn with crow feathers… and he had no memory of how he’d gotten there.  The last thing he clearly remembered was standing outside the ballet school as the strange song lit a fire in his mind.  That and…  
_“Stop him, Siegfried…”  
_     Siegfried.  
     “My name i-is—”  
     Groaning, he rolled away from the bed of feathers and struggled to the window where moonlight poured in over his crazed torment.  “I have to remember!” he cried, falling to his knees in that silvery shaft of light.  
     Clutching at his hair with both hands, he groaned and struggled to sew the shattered shards of his mind back together.  But what came to him in flashes, each one brighter in his head than the last, wasn’t the memory of _before._  
     “No!” he gasped, eyes flying open at the horrific things filling his conscious mind.  He curled into himself as a spear of pain skewered his body.  But this wasn’t the agony of the raven’s blood.  No.  This was worse.  “Wh-what have I done?”

***

     Sundays on campus were usually quiet, but since it was the last day of the summer showcase, the noise filtering in through the library windows was a constant low-level distraction as Fakhir flipped through the pages of books he’d already read and the few in the stack before him that he hadn’t.  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!” he grunted in frustration, pushing the latest book— _Ein Wunderlicher—_ away from himself.   
     Maybe what he was looking for was in the missing endings.  Or maybe the missing endings themselves were what he was meant to find.  “What connects them?” he wondered.  “Why _these_ books?”  The bookmen had to have had some form of logic in choosing which books to mutilate.  
     Or maybe there was no logic, only wanton destruction.  
     He should have pressed the bastards for more information when he was in their shop.  But then, they never had been keen to teach him anything except how to fight.  A blunt weapon.  That’s all he was.  Not a knight.  Not a protector.  Just a bludgeon to point and hit.  He’d failed to protect Mytho.  Failed to protect Aria.  Glaring at the pile of books, he realized he was even failing at this… whatever this was.  But why?  
     “Why am I so driven to this?” he wondered aloud.  This near-obsession to search out _these_ stories.  All stories lacking endings.  All written by different authors.  Different tales.  The only thing binding them was the—  
     Fakhir drew in a sharp breath and sat up straighter, eyeing the pile of books.  He spread them out, flipping open the front cover of each and rearranging them on the table.  One by one he organized them, laying them out until the pattern emerged as plain and clear as day.  He was a fool for not seeing it before.  But what did it mean?  
     On the inside cover of each book was the pressed stamp of a two-headed blackbird over the words _VR Publishing_ , and the original date of publication.  The first dated back to the late 1800’s, the last was dated 1938.  Impelled by need, Fakhir reached into his book bag and pulled out his copy of The Prince and The Raven.  Flipping the book open, he spotted again the publisher’s mark—but no date.  He huffed and slid the book into place… at the end of the line.  Twelve stories, all missing their endings, all published by the same company.  Standing, Fakhir rearranged the notes he’d taken from each book to line up with their new order and leaned both hands on the table staring down at what he’d done.  
     “I’ll be damned,” he uttered.  He moved the bits of paper around, making space for the obvious gaps as his mind turned to the pile of books stacked on his desk back at the smithy—missing pieces to the puzzle he was only just now putting together.  “It’s one story,” he realized in awe.  
     Staggered by his discovery, Fakhir collapsed into the chair and slumped back.  He pressed his knuckles to his gaping mouth and stared at the arrangement.  _How is this possible?_       
     Distracted by his discovery, he failed to hear the light footsteps that approached behind him and the accompanying feminine giggle.  A slim pair of hands slid onto his shoulders, startling him from his reverie just as a pair of lips pressed a kiss to his cheek.  
     Cursing, Fakhir spun angrily around to confront the presumptuous chit.  But when he saw who it was his jaw dropped open and his anger drained away.  “Rachel?”

***

     “The drama club’s production was good, and the music department’s symphony was excellent, but I’ve got to say, our ballet tonight is going to be the _best!”  
_     “Calm yourself,” Piqué rolled her eyes at Lillie, “You’re at the back of the corps de blanc.  By all odds no one is even going to _see_ you onstage.”  
     “ _You’ll_ be right beside me,” Lillie pouted.  
     “Yeah,” Piqué preened, “But I’m taller.”  
     Aria shook her head at the both of them.  “Where are we going anyway?” she asked.  They’d been wandering the streets of Goldkrone Towne for ten minutes now without any obvious direction.   
     “Nowhere,” Piqué answered amiably.  “Anna Pavlova here was driving me nuts pacing the corridors.”  
     “Oh, like you’re as cool as a cucumber,” Lillie threw back.  
     “Seriously,” Piqué admonished, “Tha— oh crap, Duck, don’t look.  Let’s go this way!”  
     Aria startled when Piqué grabbed her arm and hauled her around.  “Wait, what?”  
     Lillie cried out and crowded around her, and the two of them tugged her behind a flower cart.  
     “What’s going on?”  Aria demanded.  “Why’d you do that?”  
     “No Duck don’t look!”  
     Throwing them both an admonishing glare, she glanced over the flower cart and felt her jaw drop.  
     Fakhir was walking down the street, and at his side, her arm looped through his, was a tall, _beautiful_ young woman.  
     “By my pretty pink laces,” she swore under her breath.  “Who _is_ that?”  
     “Don’t look, Duck!” Lillie stage whispered in her ear.  She clapped both hands over Aria’s face, then completely ruined her attempt at… whatever it was she thought she was achieving… by announcing their location.  “They’re at a flower cart!”  
     Peering through Lillie’s fingers, Aria saw the young woman select two flowers from the cart.  She held them up for Fakhir’s inspection and, smiling, he chose one and paid for it, handing the long-stemmed rose to her.  
     “He smiled!” Piqué gasped.  “That totally ruins his bad-boy appeal.”  
     “Who is she?” Aria wondered aloud.  
     “An older woman lover?” Lillie mused.  
     She didn’t actually look that much older, Aria thought.  Maybe early twenties?  Maybe.  
     “We can’t say that for certain, yet!” Piqué replied.  
     Aria shook them both off irritably.  “Why don’t I just ask him?” she muttered.  
     Both of them stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes.  
     Aria gave them scathing looks, “I’m not hiding behind a flower cart,” she hissed at them.  “He’s coming this way anyway, and you two are terrible at this.”  She stepped out as she spoke, tripped over the curb, and landed in the street.  
     “Oh my!” the woman with Fakhir cried out.   
     “Curses,” Aria muttered, eyeing her skinned elbow and knees.  _Real mature, Aria.  
_     The pretty lady hurried quickly over and bent down, helping Aria into a sitting position on the curb.  She remained crouched over, her expression concerned as she extricated a handkerchief and pressed it to Aria’s bleeding elbow.  “Are you okay?”  
     Embarrassed, Aria looked up at the woman through her lashes.  Close up she could see the woman was really pretty.  Her hair fell in perfect waves over her shoulders and was so black it seemed to be highlighted with a deep navy blue which perfectly matched her large eyes.  Eyes that were framed with the thickest, sootiest lashes Aria had ever seen.  Dropping her gaze to her own tangled curls hanging messily over her shoulder with bits of hay stuck in them from her spill into the street, something very close to jealousy twinged in her gut.  
     “I’m fine, thank you,” she mumbled.  She climbed quickly to her feet as if standing would put her on more equal ground with the beauty and saw that Fakhir wasn’t smiling anymore.  
     He stood just to one side, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared down at her.  “There’s a curb there.”  
     “Thanks for pointing it out,” she grumbled back irritably.  
     The woman’s eyes crinkled in delight.  “Are you a friend of Fakhir’s?”  
     “Sometimes,” Aria answered, dusting off her skirt and ignoring the sound of Piqué and Lillie still hiding behind the flower cart.  
     Fakhir’s eyes drifted in that direction, then returned to her with a pointed look.  
     The woman didn’t seem to notice.  “My name’s Rachel, what’s yours?”  
     “Everyone calls me Du—”  
     “This is Aria,” Fakhir introduced her.  
     Rachel’s smile widened.  “Well Miss Aria, it’s nice to meet you. Fakhir and I are heading over to his house right now, would you like to come along?”  
     Aria’s eyes rounded and shifted to Fakhir.  His face had shuttered at Rachel’s suggestion, and she could read no emotion in his eyes.  
     “Rachel,” he murmured, his tone carrying a hint of admonishment.  
     She shot him a coy look.  “Why not?”  Then deliberately turning her back on him, she beamed a wide smile at Aria.  “Right?”  
     Even a blind man could see the _back off_ expression on Fakhir’s face now, and Aria hedged uncomfortably.  “Uh, maybe I should go find my—”  
     “It’s fine,” he snapped.  “Come if you want to.”  Then turning, he started off without them.  
     Rachel slipped an arm through Aria’s elbow, not giving her a choice in the matter.  
     “Uh, I really should—” she glanced back desperately at the flower cart she _should_ have stayed behind.  Piqué and Lillie’s heads popped up, and both wore identical expressions of gape-mouthed shock.  
     “I’m impressed you found where I was,” Fakhir smoothly picked up whatever conversation they were having before Aria had interrupted.   
     Rachel laughed lightly, “It wasn’t hard, Fakhir.  Although I was surprised to find you in the school library.  You’re always so diligent about your practice before a show.”  
     He grimaced.  “So, you came for the performance?”  
     “I would never miss one of your ballets.  You know I didn’t see Mytho around either?  Are you two still doing everything together the way you used to?”  
     Aria listened to their conversation with growing bafflement.  Clearly this woman shared some kind of history with Fakhir, but… _she also knows the prince?  Who is she?  
_     Fakhir grunted a little like she’d hit him with that last question.  
     Rachel didn’t seem to notice.  She leaned toward Aria and intimated, “You know, he and Mytho used to be quite inseparable when he was little.  It was all a girl could do to get any kind of attention when they were together.”  She winked as if this meant something and Aria felt even more out of her depth than before.  
_Who_ is _she?  
_     They rounded the corner onto Fakhir’s street, and it wasn’t Aria’s imagination that his footsteps slowed.  It’s like he was reluctant to bring Rachel back to his house which only served to make her suspicion and curiosity stronger.  
     Fakhir reached for the door, “There’s still—”  
     Before he could open it, the door swung in and Kyron stepped out.  “Oh, Fakhir, I—” Kyron’s eyes went past Fakhir to see Rachel and Aria standing together behind him.  His previously warm expression cooled to formal politeness.  “Good morning, Miss Wallach.  Are you visiting your parents?”  
     Rachel also seemed tempered as she replied, “I will be.”  She glanced toward Fakhir, “I was actually in the neighborhood to cheer on Fakhir today.”  
     Kyron’s eyebrows went up and he looked from Fakhir to Rachel.  “He hasn’t told you then?”  
     Confusion clouded the young woman’s eyes.  “Told me what?”  
     Instead of answering, Kyron seemed to notice Aria standing there, and the warmth returned to his face.  “And who is your friend, Fakhir?”  
     Fakhir made a face and glanced at her.  
_If he says “That’s just the duck,” I swear I will clobber him._ Aria shot a glare his direction.  
     Something almost like mischief entered his eyes, “A friend from school.”  
     This time Kyron’s eyebrows winged up almost to his hairline.  “Well then, I suppose you should all come in then.  I’ll put on some tea.”  He cast another odd look at Fakhir before turning and walking back into the house.  
     Rachel followed him, and Aria stepped up to Fakhir.  She flicked her hand out, catching him a stinging blow to the back of his crossed arms.  
     “Hey!” he protested.  “I was nice.”  
     “What is going on?” she hissed back, “Who is she?”  
     The look Fakhir sent in Rachel’s direction belied his earlier carefree cheer.  “Someone from Kyron’s past.”  
     On that cryptic statement, he followed Rachel into the house leaving Aria to bring up the rear.  She growled low in her throat before closing the door behind her.  
     Rachel was standing in the middle of the room while Kyron moved to the stove to heat tea.  Her eyes were fixed on Uzura.  The little doll was standing in the doorway to rest of the house with her drum, one stick frozen mid-strike, her little mouth frozen in an O.  
     “Who do you go well with, zura?” Uzura asked.  
     Rachel’s cheeks flamed and Kyron ducked his head.  Fakhir shot a death glare at the child-like doll.  
     “Kyron?” Rachel’s voice was strangled, “Is this your—”  
     “No!” Fakhir stepped past her and swung Uzura up into his arms.  “You know how Kyron likes to take in strays.”  
_Strays?_   Aria stared at him, but his inscrutable face gave nothing away.  
     “Who wants tea?” Kyron broke the tension in the room as he filled a ceramic teapot.  
     They moved to the table, Rachel taking a seat by the window and Aria the chair across from her.  Fakhir passed Uzura over to Kyron who sat with the doll in his lap at the head of the table.  Fakhir carried the tea things to the table and Rachel took over filling cups and passing them around in a manner so natural it unnerved Aria.  She wasn’t used to seeing such… domesticity.  
     “So,” Rachel passed a filled cup to Kyron.  “I gather I’ve missed a few things since moving away from the neighborhood?” she cast a look in Fakhir’s direction.  
     “Last I saw you, Mytho and I had just entered the Academy,” Fakhir affirmed her statement, accepting his own filled cup.  
     “That’s right,” Rachel sighed.  Aria didn’t miss the covert look she cast Kyron’s direction.  “I must admit, I was really lonely then.”  She handed a teacup to Aria with a warm smile, “Here you go.”  
     “Thanks,” Aria mumbled, feeling ten thousand kinds of uncomfortable.  She looked around at the faces in the room.  Only Uzura seemed completely unfazed by the growing tension.  Not that that was surprising.  Even naïve as Aria could admit she was, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on here.  
     “It’s alright,” Rachel assured her as she filled her own cup and sat down.  She smiled widely, giving Fakhir a coy look.  “I’m something of an older sister to Fakhir.”  
     “Oh!”  Aria glanced in Kyron’s direction.  The blacksmith had a patiently polite expression that gave nothing away.  “Really?”  
     “She’s been like a mother to me, ever since my parents died and I was taken in by Kyron.”  
     Aria’s teeth snapped together.  
     “So you’re brother-sister?” Uzura piped up, “not lovey-dovey, zura?”  
     Fakhir’s eyes went wide over his teacup.  He choked, turning away and coughing up the scalding liquid he’d swallowed.  
     Uzura, oblivious to the discomfort in the room, turned to Rachel.  “Then are you lovey-dovey with K—”  
     The blacksmith’s hand clamped over Uzura’s mouth.  “Now, now Uzura,” he chuckled, looking a tad bit uncomfortable.  
     Aria noticed Rachel didn’t look uncomfortable.  In fact, the young woman was practically beaming.  “How flattering!  Do we look that way?”  
     Uzura tried to answer, but her reply was muffled behind Kyron’s hand.  
     “That certainly would be nice,” she murmured, and Aria was pretty sure she was the only one who heard Rachel’s words.  
     “You shouldn’t tease adults like that,” Kyron gently chided the doll.  
     “You always treat me as a child,” Rachel’s own teasing rebuke sounded a bit sad.  
     Fakhir shifted uncomfortably and Aria caught herself squirming too.  
     “You know I’m at an age where marrying someone wouldn’t be odd,” she went on.  
     Kyron laughed lightly.  “Well, at my age all you youngsters look the same.”  
     Aria squinted at the blacksmith.  He didn’t actually look that old.  Behind the scruff of his blonde beard, and the face tanned and lined from days standing over a forge, he looked quite ageless actually.  Only his eyes seemed old.  
     Rachel’s teacup clinked into its saucer.  
     “I still see you as Gerhard and Sara’s little girl,” he smiled fondly at her, then shifted his attention to Aria.  “Fakhir was barely out of diapers when he came to me and I had never raised a child of my own.  Sara very kindly volunteered Rachel here to help me out.”  
     Fakhir groaned, “Kyron!”  
     Aria couldn’t help her giggle.  Kyron was very good at alleviating the friction in the room.  
     Rachel glanced away, “So where is Mytho?”  
     “He’s at school now,” Fakhir smoothly replied.  “Preparing for the Giselle performance.”  
     She quirked a brow, “And why aren’t you?”  
     Fakhir got to his feet, “Where are you staying these days?” he asked a bit rudely, his statement a clear dismissal.  
     Aria glanced at Kyron, surprised to see he had no intention of moderating Fakhir’s rude behavior.  Apparently there was an unspoken agreement to not discuss Mytho with Rachel for whatever reason.  So despite her own curiosity, Aria kept her words to herself.  Not that she’d had any intention otherwise.  
     “I’ve a place near the Gemeinschaft gate,” she answered, sounding chastened.  “But I was planning to stay with my parents at the watermill tonight.”  
     “I’ll walk you there, then,” he stated.  
     “Thank you,” she demurred.  “But I think I want to take a little walk with Miss Aria.”        
     Shocked to be called out, Aria blanched.  “Me?”  
     Fakhir shot her a look she couldn’t interpret before Rachel rose and circled the table.  Unable to think of any evasions, Aria got up.  She nodded at Kyron, “Thank you for the tea,” she murmured, proving that at least _she_ still had some manners.  
     Kyron’s lips quirked.  “Any time.”  
     Rachel looped an arm through Aria’s and led her out the door.  
     A thousand questions buzzed through Aria’s head as they strolled down the street toward Kanalgasse.  Topmost among them was, _what was that all about?_   The questions sat at the tip of her tongue, but before she could open her mouth, Rachel broke the silence between them.  
     “I’m a tiny bit jealous,” she admitted ruefully.  
     Aria’s stomach clenched.  “Huh?”  
     A teasing smile tugged at Rachel’s mouth, “Fakhir with a girl as cute as you?”  
     “Oh no, I’m not cute,” Aria rushed to correct her.  Her eyes went wide, “Actually I mean to say I’m not _with_ Fakhir.  Not like that.  The truth is I’m always fighting with Fakhir.  Sometimes I can’t even stand him, and you know—”  
     Rachel just tittered.  “I wonder if it’s thanks to you that Fakhir changed so much.”  
     Flummoxed, Aria stared at her.  
     “Say,” Rachel murmured.  “Is Fakhir still writing stories?”  
     “Writing stories?”  
     “The stories that boy use to write every now and again,” Rachel shook her head and shuddered.  “Sometimes they came true.”  
_What?_    
     “The stories he wrote sometimes came true?”  
     Rachel’s eyes went distant with memory.  “My family didn’t have much when we came to Goldkrone Towne.  I used to help out with the rent by looking after children.  Fakhir wasn’t one of them, but sometimes he would come and sit with me when I took my charges to the park.  I remember he loved to write stories when he was that age.  He was so young, I was surprised he even knew how to write.  They were just silly little stories, the fanciful imaginings of a child, but sometimes they would come true.”  She shook her head, eyes blinking in surprise as if the memory had caught her off guard.  “Strange,” she murmured a bit nonsensically.  Then her expression fell.  “However, after he came to Kyron’s house he just stopped writing altogether.”  
     Aria’s heart was pounding, and her lips felt numb.  “Miss Rachel?”  
     Fog seemed to clear from Rachel’s eyes and she blinked again, then focused on her companion.  “I’ve said a little too much.  I wonder if Fakhir will scold me?”  She stopped and stared up at the watermill.  “The walk seemed so much longer years ago.”  Rachel sighed.  She offered a half smile to Aria.  “Thank you for accompanying me.”  
     Still reeling from Rachel’s revelation, Aria could only nod mutely in reply.  _To think Fakhir wrote stories.. and they came true!  If he can do that, maybe he can write a story and make Mytho go back to being Mytho!_ Excitement pulsed through her veins and she started back the way they had come.  
     “Miss Aria?”  
     “Oh, sorry!” Aria called over her shoulder as she hurried away, “I just remembered something!  It was fun talking to you!”  
     Rachel stared after her and then sighed, turning back to the watermill.  She walked to the door and swung it open.  “Fakhir has changed,” she murmured under her breath.  “But no, the one who’s changed the most…” her eyes went to the wedding dress hanging on the far wall, “is me.”

***

     Fakhir tossed another pitchfork of soiled hay into the wheelbarrow and eyed the stall he was cleaning out.  After that fiasco of an afternoon, he needed the outlet of manual labor to burn off his restless energy.  First the discovery in the library, then… everything with Rachel.  _Hell._   His thoughts turned to those last few weeks before he and Mytho had moved into the Academy.  Rachel had always been around when he’d come to live with Kyron.  She’d prepared meals, done the cleaning, looked after him as a child.  When Mytho came to live with them, she came around less often.  Fakhir was older then and didn’t need looking after.  He’d taken over the cooking, Mytho helped with the cleaning, but Rachel always did find some way to be there too.  Eventually Fakhir had noticed the way she looked at Kyron with expectation, and the way Kyron had always treated her with patience and… distance.  It was clear what she wanted, and what Kyron wasn’t willing to give.  
     Fakhir huffed and bent back to his chore.  “Love makes people stupid,” he muttered.  His eyes drifted to the Lohengrin sword standing in the corner.  Anymore, Fakhir felt itchy if it wasn’t close at hand.  Light glinted off the words carved into the hilt, _Cum caritas._   “Different kind of love,” he muttered grumpily.  He deliberately turned his back on the sword mocking him.  
     What use was the sword to him now, anyway?  He’d taken it up to protect Mytho, but what use was a sword against the monsters in Mytho’s mind, or the raven’s blood in his veins?  What use were the stories he’d found?  Or anything he’d done so far?  “The fight has begun.  The story is moving, whether I’m here or not.”  He tossed another pitchfork of hay into the wheelbarrow with such violence, the wheelbarrow tipped to one side and spilled its load all over the cleaned floor.  Shouting a curse, he flung the pitchfork aside.  Gringolet startled in his stall with a whinny.  
     Chastened, Fakhir went to the horse, calming it with a hand upon the beast’s neck.  “Sorry old friend,” he soothed the animal.   
     Gringolet chuffed and nipped at his hair.  
     The stable door burst open suddenly, startling Fakhir and the horse.  
     “There you are!” Aria exclaimed.  She was breathing hard and looked like she’d run the whole way here.   
     Fakhir’s first thought was that something had gone terribly wrong.  He straightened, already reaching for his father’s sword.  
     Aria hastened in, sunlight spilling through the open door around her.  “Fakhir, guess what Rachel told me?” she gushed excitedly, “She said stories you write have the power to come true!”  
     His hand froze and every muscle in his body locked down.  Fear and horror in equal measure seized his throat.  “She what?” he croaked.  
     Unaware of his reaction, she beamed at him.  “If you really have that power and you write a story where Mytho get saved in the end—”  
_Write a story?  That comes true?_   No.  It couldn’t be done.  It was impossible.  Visions filled his head.  Feathers and beaks.  Blood and pain.  No.Stories can’t change the future.  _No_.  He stepped toward her and she broke off suddenly, her eyes going wide.  
     “Fakhir?” fear and confusion shimmered on the word.  
     “What are you saying?” he growled.  
     “I-I said some of the stories you wrote when you were little came true.”  
     His head buzzed with faint memory even as his whole body seemed to reject the idea.   
     “So…”  
     “Be quiet!” he snapped.  And though he spoke in little more than a whisper, he couldn’t keep the violence from his voice.  
     “But Mytho could—” she ventured warily.  
     “Shut up!” he shouted again.  He had to get out.  He couldn’t breathe in here.  Grasping his sword, Fakhir pushed past her into the street but it wasn’t any better there.  _Not enough air.  
_     “What do you mean ‘shut up’?” she shouted back, following him with her face screwed up and her hands balled into fists.  “Why are you talking to me that way?”    
_Silence.  I need silence._ Memories were battering at his mind.  Awful memories of pain and terror, rage and sorrow.  Wings, feathers, beaks.  Ripping, rending.  Screaming, crying.  _Fear.  
_     He started toward the smithy, seeking the silence and sanctuary of his room.  
     “Hey!” Aria called after his retreating back.  “If I really could help Mytho by myself, Fakhir, I wouldn’t be asking you—” she broke off, standing in the middle of the street as he reached the door.  Anger seemed to flee her.  “But right now I can’t do anything.”  
     “I said be quiet!” Fakhir snapped.  He put a hand upon the door and refused to meet her eye.  “I’ll protect Mytho as a knight, end of story.  I won’t take orders from you!”  
     Tears filled her eyes.  “Fak—”  
     Unable to take anymore, he fled inside and slammed the door in her face, throwing the bolt behind him for added measure.  
     A second later her fist pounded the door at his back.  “Fakhir why!?” she called through the heavy wood.  “Hey, listen to me!  _Talk_ to me!”  
     But he couldn’t.  He couldn’t even breathe.  Clutching his father’s sword, Fakhir sank to the ground listening to her rail curses against the door while his heart threatened to pound out of his chest.  
_Stories can’t come true.  
_     They can’t.  Except…  
     Memories flooded him.  
_His mother’s house.  His father’s trunk.  The ever-burning candle.  
__She pats the chair beside her, beckoning him forward.  
__“What do you want, mutti?”  
__She smiles.  “I want you to write me a story…”_


	15. Märchenbrunnen

_**Fountain of Fairytales** _

 

    “Wait!” Rue cried out, dropping back to the flats of her feet and breathing hard.  “This is _Giselle,_ Mytho.  Not the Firebird.  You have to slow down!”  
     He suppressed a growl and glared out the window of the small studio across the green to the back of the stage set up in the center of the quad.  “What difference does it make?” he complained.  “It’s not like this pathetic façade matters.”   
     Rue’s face blanched and she pressed a hand to her side.  “You don’t mean that.”  
     “Of course I do,” he swore, turning back to her with a scowl.  “We shouldn’t be wasting our time on this trifle.  The raven needs a heart.”  
     She looked stricken.  “But you love to dance,” her voice wavered on the words.  
     For a moment the shadows muddying his mind cleared a bit and he blinked at her, but almost at once they closed again and he laughed.  “What is love?  Everyone just wants to _be_ loved.  That is all.  Love is a lie.”  
     Rue wrapped her arms around herself and looked away.  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.  “I know how much you’ve been suffering.  I lost sight of that.  I’m sure my father’s blood will spare you soon.  Once we’ve given him a heart, he can help you.”  
     “I don’t care if he helps me or not,” Mytho purred back.  Something vicious reared its ugly head within him.  “Once we’ve restored the raven to his fullness, I’ll cut that black heart from his chest and feast upon it.  Then _I_ will be the Lord of Crows.”  
     She blinked at him in horror.  
     Mytho smiled and held a hand out for her to take.  “And you will stand at my side as my queen, Krähe.”  
     She stared at him, slowly shaking her head as she backed away.  “No,” she murmured brokenly.  “No!”  Turning on her heel, she raced from the studio, almost colliding with the woman who suddenly stepped through the door.  She just barely managed to dodge out of the way and go reeling around the corner before calamity occurred.  
     The woman’s eyebrows went up while she watched the fleeing girl.  “Pre-performance nerves?”  
     Mytho blinked at the woman in surprise.  “Rachel?”  
     She turned away from where Rue had fled and smiled at him.  “Hello Mytho.”  
     True delight cracked the blackness in his head, and he smiled back.  “What are you doing here?”  
     “Did you really think I’d miss the show?  I’ve seen every ballet you and Fakhir have danced in since you came to the Academy.”  
     He laughed at that, “You’ve fallen behind then.  Fakhir danced in the—” _sham of a,_ “drama club’s presentation on Friday.”  
     Confusion clouded her pretty features.  “I thought he was dancing Hilarion tonight.”  
     Smiling smoothly, he shook his head.  “He lost the role when he was suspended.”   
 _“Look at her,”_ the dark voice in his head rejoiced, _“her heart is ripe for plucking!”  
_      Mytho’s eyes narrowed.  “At any rate, I’m glad you came to see me.”  
     Rachel seemed to shake herself and then forced a smile.  “So much has changed,” she muttered.  She turned large, sad eyes on him.  “I’m almost jealous of you, Mytho.”  
     “Of me?”  
     “If only I could live unchanging, like you.”  
     He closed the short distance between them and brushed a stray lock of hair from her face.  “That’s not true,” he murmured back.  “See, I’m different than I was before.  I’ve gotten my heart back.”  He smiled only half-teasingly.  “And that means now I can even accept your love for me.”  
     She laughed lightly, “Now that’s some happy news,” she teased back.  “Maybe I’ll even call off the wedding then.”  
 _Wedding?_ His eyes narrowed further.  He took a step back and studied her closely.  Congratulations.”  
     “Thank you,” she whispered, but she didn’t look too happy to be getting married.  
 _No good,_ he thought.  _Only the purest love can be wholly corrupted.  
_ _“She’s close enough,”_ the dark voice whispered back.  
     “You don’t look very happy,” he stalled.  “Could it be you’re wavering?”  
     She huffed a little and turned away.  “Of course not.  I was only joking before. Hans loves me deeply from the bottom of his heart.”  Rachel took a step toward the door.  “With him, I’m sure I can have a happy life.”  
 _Close enough,_ he agreed.  He reached out and took her hand.  “Come now, you can’t lie to your own feelings, Rachel.”  He drew her closer with his hand on hers, and slid an arm around her waist.  “You’ve got a pure and beautiful heart, haven’t you?”  
     Her face closed down and she gently but firmly extracted her hand from his and pushed him away.  “I’m going now, Mytho.”  Turning, she headed for the door, stopping at the threshold long enough to glance in his direction.  “Remind me again, in ballet is it good luck or bad luck to say ‘break a leg’?”  
     He forced a laugh and watched as she smiled and glided away.  The instant she was gone he stopped laughing and glared at the spot where she’d stood.  “I will have you love me, and me alone.  And you will sacrifice your heart to me!”

***

     The world blurred around Aria as she hurried through town toward school, only reaching up to wipe the tears away when her vision became so hazy that she started running into things.  Just because Fakhir decided to be a horse’s behind and a crummy friend, didn’t mean she was going to be one too.  Any minute now the curtain was going to rise on the ballet school’s presentation of Giselle, and she wasn’t going to miss Piqué and Lillie’s big moment.  
     Because she was hurrying, and crying, and not really watching where she was going, and not particularly graceful to begin with it was no surprise to her when she collided with someone hard enough to knock them both to the ground.  “I’m so sorry,” she immediately apologized, climbing to her knees and quickly reaching out to help the other person back up with one hand while she cleared her eyes of tears with the back of her other hand.  “Oh, Rachel!”  
     Rachel looked back at her in surprise.  “Are you okay, Miss Aria?  You’ve been crying.”  
     Aria snapped her teeth together and willed her eyes not to water, but treacherous tears slipped free anyway.  “No, I’m alright, really.”  
     “Oh dear,” Rachel murmured.  She slid an arm around Aria’s shoulders and pulled her to one side.  Aria realized they were on the edge of the Marktplatz when Rachel guided her to a table outside a small café and sat her down.  “Tell me what happened,” she entreated as she took the seat on the other side of the table.  
     She looked across at Rachel, the woman’s eyes full of sympathy and compassion, and the whole sorry tale rushed out of her in almost one breath.  
     Rachel’s face darkened.  “I see,” she muttered unhappily.  “So Fakhir said that, did he?”  
     Staring down at her own hands folded on the bistro table, she hedged around the finer details.  “See, I want to help someone and he’s important to Fakhir too.  So I thought, maybe if Fakhir wrote a story, maybe we could help this person.  But it looks like—”  
     “I’m so sorry,” Rachel reached out and covered Aria’s hands with hers.  “This is my fault.  I said something I shouldn’t have.”  
     Aria blinked at her.  “What?”  
     “Miss Aria, please?” Rachel looked a little desperate, “Will you pretend that you never heard what I told you before?”  
     “But…” her mind blanked.   “Saving this guy will make Fakhir happy too,” she protested weakly.  
     Rachel sighed heavily.  “In exchange, Fakhir will end up hurt as well though.”  
     Her stomach twisted.  “What?”  
     Rachel gazed toward the sky speculatively.  “There’s a reason Fakhir stopped writing stories, Miss Aria.  You see, a long time ago a lot of crows showed up in Goldkrone Towne.  It was a terrible time.  The birds attacked the townspeople indiscriminately and many people were hurt.  Some even died.  Fakhir was a child, but he must have wanted to do something to help.  He wrote a story where he became a hero and defeated the crows.  And then, just like Fakhir had written, the crows came and attacked him.  But the ending was different than his story.  Both of his parents were killed.  Afterwards, it got so he never talked about it, as if he’d sealed those memories away.”  Rachel swallowed a sob.  “It must still cut him deeply and yet I—” she broke off.   
     Horror washed over her in waves with every word out of Rachel’s mouth, leaving her feeling numb.  “I-I’m so sorry,” she whispered hoarsely.  
     Rachel squeezed her hand.  “It’s my fault, not yours.  Fakhir will forgive you, I’m sure.  He’s a good bo—” she broke off and blinked, “a good man,” she finished sadly.  “But please, Aria, give him some space.”  
     Rising dazedly to her feet, Aria nodded.  “Of course,” she promised.  “I will.  Yes.”  
     “Are you going to the Giselle performance?” Rachel asked, also rising.  
     Aria blinked and looked toward the school.  In the distance the bell of St. Godfrey’s rang the hour.  “Yes,” she answered.  “You?”  
     Rachel also glanced toward the school.  Her mouth opened and closed.  “I-I can’t,” she stammered.  She turned away.  “There’s some place else I should be.  Remember what I said, Aria.”  And with that she departed the square back toward the watermill.  
     Aria also wandered away, but she wasn’t heading for the school.  She went in the opposite direction, heading down kanalgasse when she reached the canal with no actual destination in mind until she reached a bridge.  It was the very same bridge where she’d once cast her pendant into the water.  She stepped onto it and stared down at her own face reflected in the river below.  “I’m a fool,” she whispered.  “I never knew Fakhir had something like that happen to him.”  
     But of course, it should have been obvious.  Why else would he have gone to live at the smithy and be raised by Kyron?  
     A familiar clattering drew her attention and she turned her head to see Uzura tottering up to her.  The little doll stopped when she saw Aria.  “What’s wrong, zura?”  
     Aria sighed and sank down to her knees, leaning her head against the stone railing of the bridge.  “I’m the worst,” she muttered, absently closing a hand around her faintly humming pendant.  “What should I say to Fakhir?”  
     Uzura toddled closer.  “You want to say something to Fakhir, zura?”  Then, in the manner of a child easily distracted, she looked up at the sky.  “Wow, lots of crows zura!”  
     Aria looked up as well and saw Uzura was right.  A ponderous murder of crows was circling in the sky.  She remembered Rachel’s story and her heart twisted for a little boy who tried to make the world better with a story.  Then her mind registered what the birds were doing.  They were circling and collecting over the watermill.  _The watermill._ And Rachel had been coming from the school where Mytho would have been dancing the prince in Giselle.  She’d come to see the performance, but she wasn’t staying for it.  Had she already seen Mytho?  Cold washed through her.  “Oh no!  Could Mytho be trying to get Rachel’s heart?”  
     Forgetting her own misery, Aria leapt to her feet and transformed into Tutu, sprinting toward the descending crows.

***

     Crow song filled his ears as Mytho approached the closed door of the watermill.  A smile settled over his face in response to the twisted, beautiful sound.  Without even bothering to knock, he threw open the door and framed himself in the entrance.   
     Startled, Rachel swung around to face him.  She was dressed in a long, gauzy gown of virginal white with a veil tucked into her hair.  Beside her, old Mrs. Wallach gaped at him.  “Mr. Fürst!  This is hardly appropriate—”  
     Mytho waved a hand and the woman fainted dead away, landing in a chair, her chin slumping onto her chest.  
     Rachel’s jaw dropped as she stared from her mother to him.  “Mytho, what are you doing?”  
     “I came to get you, Rachel,” he answered easily.  A crow fluttered through the door as he entered the house and landed on his shoulder.  He extended his hand and beckoned her forward, “My beautiful bride.”  
     Outrage sparked in Rachel’s eyes.  “Get out,” she commanded.  “This is my wedding day!”  
     “And who is it you plan to marry?” he asked in amusement.  “This Hans?”  
     She propped her hands on her hips, “It’s no difference to you, Mytho.”  
     “Tell me,” he purred, “Did you see Kyron today?”  
     Her face reddened, “How dare yo—”  
     “So you did,” he smirked.  “And has he returned your love after all these years?”  
     Rachel paled, her skin going almost dead-white.  
     Strolling idly toward her, Mytho shook his head sadly.  The crow, disturbed from its perch, fluttered up into the rafters.  “My poor, sweet, Rachel.  Doomed to live forever with this unrequited love in your heart, dragging you down with its chains.”  As he spoke, he reached out and brushed the tip of his finger over her neck, tracing a line down to her heart.  
     “Stop that,” she whispered without force.  
     “If you give that poor broken heart to me, Rachel, you’ll never have to feel the weight of those chains again.”  He leaned in, closing the distance between them.  “Kiss me,” he ordered softly.  
     “No.”  
     He smiled, and in one quick move grabbed her and covered her mouth with his.  She fought for that sweet instant before the darkness in him curled into her, and by the time he stepped away her eyes had glazed over.  “Come my beautiful bride,” he commanded, rubbing his thumb almost lovingly over her swollen lips.  “Our wedding procession awaits us.”

***

_“What do you want, mutti?”_  
_“I want you to write me a story.”_  
_The little boy toddled over to the humble table in the small room of their house.  His mother had spread out a parchment on the table, and an old-fashioned inkwell sat beside it along with a fancy quill. He frowned at them.  “Can’t I just use one of my pencils?” he asked._  
_“No my sweet,” she smiled beautifully down at him.  “This is a very special story.”  She reached down and grasped him under his arms, pulling him into the warmth of her lap._  
_From his new vantage point, the little boy could see there was a printed piece of paper lying on the table as well.  It didn’t look like letters that scrawled over it though, at least not any letters he had ever learned.  “Are those pictures?” he asked._  
_“Of a sort,” she answered, brushing a kiss along his cheek.  “It’s an old language, far older than this land.  I want you to draw those pictures here, my sweet,” she pointed at the parchment.  “With this ink and quill.”_  
_He frowned, “I thought you wanted me to write you a story?”_  
_“It is a story,” she assured him._  
_He twisted around to look at her.  “What kind of story?”_  
_She beamed down at him.  “A special one.  You saw all the birds in town earlier, didn’t you?”_  
_The little boy frowned and nodded.  He’d seen them.  They were hurting people.  Mutti had grabbed him and run when she’d seen the birds.  He wanted to stay and help, but he was too little._  
_“Well this story is going to make all those mean birds go away.”_  
_His eyes rounded.  “It will?”_  
_“Yes, my love.  All you have to do is copy it down just as it’s printed here, and you’ll be a hero and cast all those awful birds out of this place forever.”_  
_Awe filled him.  “I can do that with a story?”  
_ _She took his little hand in hers and closed his fingers around the quill.  “My poor, dear boy.  With the right story, you can make anything happen.”_

     Fakhir stared at the scarred, careworn surface of his desk with wide eyes.  His hands clutched at his hair as unwelcome memories dredged from the depths of his consciousness to plague him again.  Aria’s words rang on a loop in his head.  _“If you really have that power and you write a story where Mytho gets saved in the end—”  
_      But that wasn’t how the power had worked.  He’d copied the words of that ancient language exactly as his mother had asked him to, and she still died.  His father died.  The town was still cursed.  Nothing had changed.  
     “What is this awful feeling?” he croaked, pressing a fist to his aching chest.  “The power to make stories come true?”  It couldn’t be.  It was impossible.   
     Edel’s face suddenly filled his mind as she slowly dismembered herself to save his life.  _“_ _This story needs a new writer, Fakhir, and if I had a choice of one, I choose you.”_  
     “A power like that in me?”  He shook his head in disbelief.  “It’s ridiculous.”  
     As if the memory of Edel had summoned her, Uzura came tumbling into his room with her usual clatter.  “Fakhir!” she called out.  “Is it Mytho that Rachel is lovey-dovey with zura?”  
     His eyes snapped to the doll.  “Why would you ask that?”  
     “Because Rachel was dressed up all in white with Mytho zura.”  
     He stared at her for a fast second.  Then he grabbed his sword.

***

     Tutu stared in horror at the street outside the watermill.  Hundreds of crows had gathered there, perched on every available surface.  At one end of the street was the dark prince’s altar, and at the other stood Mytho with Rachel at his side.  The young woman was dressed in a beautiful wedding gown with a filmy veil obscuring her face.  Together they approached the dark altar as lovers would at a wedding.  
     “No,” she breathed in horror.  
     Mytho’s words echoed down the street to her when he leaned toward Rachel and spoke.  “I’ll give you a love with no wavering,” he swore to her with a smirk.  “You’ll love only me, won’t you?”  
     “Yes Mytho,” she answered in that now-familiar daze.  
     Spinning away from her and jumping up onto the altar, Mytho transformed into the dark prince and spread those terrible dark wings.  “Then come to me, my Rachel!  Come here and give your beautiful heart to me!”  
     Smiling absently, she clutched at a small handful of flowers and started toward the altar as a true bride would descend the aisle.  Crow feathers drifted down in a twisted parody of flower petals showering a new couple’s love.  “I am Mytho’s bride.”  
     Tutu leapt forward.  “Wait!” she called out.  
     Rachel paused and looked back.  “Who are you?”  
     Panic clutching at her chest, Tutu took several steps toward Rachel.  “I am known as Princess Tutu,” she told the woman.  She rose up en pointe and swirled her hands in the mime for dance.  “Please come dance with me, won’t you Miss Rachel?”  
     Rachel’s expression twisted with confusion.  “Princess Tutu?”  
     “That’s a lovely wedding dress,” She smiled encouragingly.  Dropping her hands, she tapped the fourth finger of her left hand in the mime for marriage.  “You have someone you’re engaged to, right?”  She bourreed a few feet closer.  “Then why are you doing this?”  
     The would-be bride blinked at her.  “Kyron knows how I feel,” she murmured brokenly.  “But when I saw him, he said nothing.”  She dropped her eyes mournfully and twisted the poor flowers in her hands until they were nothing but shreds.  “He did nothing.”  
     Taken aback, Tutu could only stare at her.  
     “Hans however,” Rachel shook her head.  “He assures me of his love for me.  He looks only at me and holds me close.  And I love him dearly as well.  But no matter what I do, I see Kyron’s face in my mind!”  
     Understanding splintered through her and Tutu sighed.   
     “You’re suffering because you’re wavering between two loves,” Mytho called to her from atop the altar.  “Love only me and your wavering will vanish.”  
     “You mustn’t go there,” Tutu pleaded as Rachel started to turn back toward him. “It is only the greatness of your love which scares you.”  
     “What scares me is that I may still love Kyron,” Rachel tearfully responded.  “When that thought crosses my mind, being with Hans is… it’s painful!”  She tossed the twisted bouquet to the ground and turned fully toward the dark prince.   
     “Yes!” Mytho exulted.  “Give me your heart!”  
     “It’s caused me nothing but torment,” Rachel mourned.  “It’s yours.”  
     With those two words, the crow… things surged up from the ground at Rachel’s feet and hoisted her high into the air as a willing sacrifice.  Her white veil fluttered like so many broken dreams to the ground.

***

     Tutu’s scream spurred Fakhir on and he sprinted flat out up the street toward the watermill.  He rounded a corner and stopped dead at the sight of hundreds of crows framing the street.  At the end nearest him the dark, twisted version of Mytho stood atop an evil altar with black wings spread at his sides.  At the other end crow monsters were carrying Rachel toward that awful altar, and beyond her, Tutu bent down and lifted a veil from the ground.  
 _A veil?  
_      His eyes went back to Rachel and rounded at the sight of her in a wedding dress.  A dozen things suddenly clicked into place.  Her odd story of coming to see him dance.  Their weird conversation of the old days.  The bizarre tea at the smithy.  They all flashed through his mind and were just as quickly dismissed as unimportant.  
     “That’s right!” the _thing_ that was Mytho gloated gleefully from his altar.  “All your torment will be gone if you love only me!”  
     “If I love only you,” she parroted woodenly.  
     “No!” Tutu screamed again in rage.  “You’re making a grave mistake, Miss Rachel!”  She lifted the veil in both her hands and started to dance.   
     The crow… things bearing Rachel slowed down as she lifted her head and turned it toward Tutu.  
     “No!” the dark prince cursed.  “Stop her!”  
     Several dozen crows dove down from their perches toward Tutu.  
 _Not again!  
_      Fakhir leaped from his frozen place in the shadows and cut the birds from the sky.  
     “Just forget about everything else and love only me!” the dark prince screamed.  
     “Your love for Kyron,” Tutu’s voice rang out as she pirouetted, the veil billowing beautifully around her.  “Your love for Hans, both of these things reflect your true heart, Miss Rachel.  It is not something to fear.  The heart is limitless.  Loving Kyron does not lessen your love for Hans anymore than loving Fakhir could lessen your love for your parents.”   
     More crows descended, and Fakhir ground his teeth as he struggled to keep them from stopping Tutu.  She had to keep going.  The crow… things bearing Rachel toward the altar had almost come to a complete stop now.  
     Tutu crossed her hands over her heart in the mime for love, “If you lose your heart you will lose all that love,” she murmured.  “Is that what you truly want?”  
     “True and false have nothing to do with it!” the dark prince bellowed.  “People just love others because they want to be loved!  Love is a lie!  She only wavers because she wonders which one will love her more!”  
     Tutu’s face reddened, though her dance never wavered as she turned her face toward the dark prince.  “ _That_ is the lie!” she shouted back.  She turned to Rachel.  “The pain you feel now, that is how you truly feel!  But you needn’t be in pain, and you don’t have to sacrifice your heart to be at peace!  You fear that loving Kyron lessens your love for Hans.  That isn’t true!  It never was!”  
     More crows closed on them, more than Fakhir could fight.  He whirled as fast he could, but the street was growing slick with blood and treacherous with the bodies he’d already cut down.  The crows closed on Tutu and she raised her arms against them.  They tore at the veil she held, plucking the fine fabric from her hands.   
     “Give me your heart now!” the dark prince roared.  
     “No!” Suddenly vegetation shot out from window boxes all around them.  Flowered vines whipped through the air and birds screamed as feathers flew.  Fakhir was forced to defend himself when panicking birds turned on their wings and fled, flying right at him.  When the cacophony died down there wasn’t a single live crow left on the street.  Tutu stood in its center, righteous wrath emanating from her in an almost visible aura.  
     “Wake up, Rachel!” she commanded.  “You want to be happy with the one you love most, don’t you!”  
     Rachel’s eyes cleared.  “I kept on weighing their loves against each other for the sake of my own happiness,” she realized in horror.  Tears filled her eyes and spilled free.  “To escape the aching pain of my uncertainty, I set out to get Fakhir to write a story about me, even though I knew it would hurt him!”  
     Fakhir lowered his sword in shock.  
     “I’m a horrible woman!”  She cried out, covering her face with her hands.  
     “To want to be loved by those we love is not an evil feeling,” Tutu comforted her.  “I’m sure it hurts to waver between two loves.  But simply running away won’t help you to escape that pain.”  
     The crow… things holding Rachel melted back into the ground.  
     On his altar, the dark prince exploded in rage.  “No!  You should be loving only me!”  Shadows began to swirl around him violently.  Tutu quickly sprang forward and caught Rachel as the woman slumped senselessly to the street.  The dark prince towered over them, and a black blade formed in his hand.   
     Fakhir sprang forward, putting himself between the girls and Mytho.  “I will not allow you to harm them!” he growled.  
     Mytho laughed at him.  “How interesting.”  He lifted his sword, and Fakhir could see that it resembled a demented raven version of the prince’s sword he’d shattered.  
     “Stop!” Tutu cried out, also springing to her feet.  Before she could take two steps, the same sort of crow warriors Fakhir had fought at the lake suddenly materialized from the shadows and grasped her arms.  
     Fakhir hesitated, seeing the circle of enemies around her.  But his attention was drawn back to Mytho when the dark prince leapt down from his altar and struck at him.  Fakhir parried and sneered.  “Mytho, do you feel nothing?  You would even use Rachel?”  
     “I was merely trying to save her!”  He disengaged and spun, slicing toward Fakhir’s face.  
     Fakhir stumbled over the body of a bird as he retreated and turned his faltered step into a smooth backflip.  He landed several feet away and lifted his sword to the ready again while the dark prince surged at him.  He started to step forward to meet the attack, but the crow… things suddenly reached up out of the ground and grasped his ankle.  
     “Fakhir!” Tutu screamed.  
     Limited in his reactions, Fakhir set his teeth and caught the attack on his blade.  “Trying to ‘save’ her?  Don’t sugar-coat things.”  
     “What?” the dark prince taunted, “like you’ve done with your ‘service’?  Knights who can’t even die shouldn’t point fingers.”   
     Fakhir flung Mytho away with brunt strength and wrenched his ankle free.  
     The dark prince landed gracefully and grinned.  “Pathetic.”  With a dark flash he closed again, and it was obvious at once that he’d only been toying with Fakhir before.  
     It was all Fakhir could do to keep up with him as he parried and blocked blow after blow that rained down upon him.  He was reminded at once that Mytho _was_ the prince from a story, and somewhere in that story he had been very well trained.  
     “How long are you going to go on shaming yourself?” the dark prince derided.  “Wielding that play sword of yours?”  
     Fakhir ground his teeth together, self-aware enough to know that he was losing this fight.  Badly.  
     “Mytho, stop it!” Tutu cried out.  
     The dark prince struck a powerful blow, and Fakhir barely got the flat of his blade up in time to stop it from cutting him in two.  He braced a hand on the blade and struggled to hold it back as Mytho insisted the attack.  Blood ran down his wrist as he gripped the sharp.  
     The dark prince smiled scornfully.  “You know you can’t lay a finger on me, Fakhir!”  
     “This sword isn’t for slaying you with, Mytho!” Fakhir ground back, “Now wake up, remember your true self!”  
     Triggered by those words, something shattered in Mytho’s eyes and he stumbled backward.  He lowered his sword, and then to Fakhir’s shock, slapped himself in the face.  Hard.  “Stop it!” he muttered, his voice almost familiar again.  And then, “Shut up!” he growled in that sick, _wrong_ tone.  He hunched over, shoulders shaking.  “Shut up!”  
     Fakhir stared gape-mouthed at Mytho’s apparent breakdown.  _Is this what the raven’s blood is making him do?  Is the real Mytho still in there, fighting to break free?_  
     His whole body jerked.  “Shut up!” he raged, and suddenly surged up again.  He raised his sword in a high guard and rushed at the unprepared Fakhir.  
     Fakhir only barely deflected before Mytho’s sword disengaged and swung around.  It bit deep into his side and he cried out in pain.  The dark prince pressed his advantage and knocked the Lohengrin blade out of his grip.  Fakhir stumbled backward, a hand pressed to his bleeding side.  He looked up at Mytho with betrayal written on his face.  “So this is what it’s come to?” he asked softly.  
     Mytho’s expression was harsh and unforgiving.  “Now you die, knight!”  
     “Fakhir!” Tutu screamed.  With a sudden burst of golden light, she broke free of the crow warriors holding her and whipped forward, landing between them just as Mytho’s sword descended in its lethal blow.   
     “No!”  Fakhir shouted, his own pain forgotten.  He grabbed her and rolled out of the way.  The blade sliced across her arm and he felt a hot pain cut across his own skin as he took them to the ground.  Looking up, he saw his father’s sword just within reach.  His eyes went further, and he saw Mytho standing over them.  Blood dripped from the tip of his sword.  Her blood and his mixed on the edge of the dark prince’s blade.  The world went suddenly red around him.  He reached for the Lohengrin sword where it had fallen and climbed to his feet, facing Mytho in cold fury.  The pain in his side was gone.  His hesitation was gone.  He lifted his weapon, ready to strike.  Ready to kill.  
     But Mytho wasn’t striking.  
     He looked panicked.  
     “No, stop this!” he pleaded desperately.  “Don’t you hurt Fakhir, you raven!”  
     Perplexity tempered his rage.  “Mytho?”  
     “Run!”  Mytho warned, backing away.  “Don’t—don’t come near me!”  
     Still on the ground, Tutu gazed up at him.  “Mytho?”  
     Tormented eyes went to her, and then in a sudden burst of darkness he and his crow warriors disappeared.  
     Fakhir’s sword rang when it hit the cobbles and he dropped to his knees beside Aria.  “Are you—”  
     “I’m fine,” she said quickly, her hand pressed over her arm.  She raised it and he could see that the wound was only a scratch.  Relief flooded him, easing the terrible tension which had seized him the moment she’d put herself into danger.  He suppressed the urge to shake her for her foolishness.   
     Aria gazed across the littered street to where Rachel lay.  “We should get her inside.”  
     Fakhir turned and saw Rachel, still unconscious.  He hurried toward her, not even thinking twice of the blood on his clothes when he lifted her into his arms.  Aria preceded him toward the watermill and opened the door.  “Will she be alright?” he demanded.  
     She wrinkled her nose at the blood now staining Rachel’s wedding dress, “She will.  Usually the girls sleep off whatever Mytho does to them to make them…” she trailed off and shook her head.  “They normally don’t remember.  But I think she will notice the blood.”  
     He frowned as he laid her down on a bed.  Her eyes flickered briefly open and she blinked blearily at him.  “Fakhir?”  
     “It’s alright,” he promised her, “you’re safe now.”  
     Tears filled her eyes.  “I’m sorry, please forgive me,” she cried.  “I was thinking only of myself.  All I wanted was to escape my pain, and I did something to hurt you.  I’m sorry.”  
     Sighing wearily,  he embraced her.  “It’s alright, I’ve already forgiven you, Rachel.”

           

     After leaving a sleeping Rachel and her still unconscious mother in the watermill, Aria insisted on walking with Fakhir back to the smithy.  And carrying his sword, much to his chagrin.  Dark thoughts were chasing themselves through his head, and Fakhir wasn’t sure he wanted the company, but he wasn’t up to yelling at her twice in one day.  
     “Do you think she’ll marry Hans?” the girl asked in a small voice.  
     “Yeah,” he sighed.  “I think she will.”  
     They reached the smithy and to his surprise, Aria followed him inside.  “Is Kyron around?”  
     “No, he had deliveries to make today.”  
     She nodded and set his sword in a corner.  “Then take off your shirt,” she ordered.  
     Fakhir stared at her in shock, “You might have a loose interpretation as to the usefulness of clothing, but I—”  
     She rolled her eyes at him and pointed at his side.  “You’re bleeding, Fakhir.  Do you want me to see to it or not?”  
     “Not,” he decided firmly, turning away.  “It’s nothing.”  
     “Then take off your shirt and prove it to me.”  
     He shot her a hot glare.  She was standing in the middle of the room, her arms crossed over her chest, jaw stubbornly jutted out and for one dazzling moment he realized she had no idea how adorable she was.   _What the hell??_   He shook himself like a dog.  “Fine if it will make you go away,” he grumbled, wincing as he tried to pull the shirt off over his head.  Pain lanced through his side and suddenly she was there helping him.  He wanted to swat her away, but at the same time he wasn’t sure he actually _could_ take off his shirt without her aid.  
     He heard her suck in her breath sharply and he shot her a quick look, only remembering about his scars when it was too late.  But it wasn’t that which had caught her attention.  Face pale, Aria reached out and touched his skin near the wound in his side.  “That bad?” he asked, looking down at the long bloody line that scored its way across his ribs.  He had to admit it did look pretty awful.  
     “Sit down,” she told him, “I’ll be right back.”  And Aria headed toward the stairs.  
     Fakhir stared after her incredulously and pressed his wadded-up shirt against the wound in his side.  If he was being honest with himself it hurt like hell, but he was never going to admit that out loud.  
     “I told you to sit down,” Aria scolded him when she returned.  He recognized his medical kit in her hands when she returned.  Rolled linen bandages, gauze—and most frighteningly—needle and thread.  She set the implements on the table and turned to fill a bowl with clean water.  
     “I’m fine,” he told her with some alarm, sinking into a chair.  
     “Really?” she scoffed.  “Because you’re bleeding all over the floor.”  
     He glared at her.  
     Loftily, she ignored him as she set the tray down and pulled a chair over beside him.  “Now raise your arm and let me have a look at this.”  
     Reluctantly, Fakhir raised his arm and hissed in pain as muscles pulled against the injury.  
     She huffed irritably and set his arm on her shoulder.  
     He stared at the top of her head as she bent to work.  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”  
     “Of course,” she assured him, reaching for the bowl of water.   
     He winced as she started cleaning the blood away.  She didn’t seem to be bothered by the sight of it and he remembered she’d bound his wounds after his battle with Krähe.  In fact, she was working with an almost clinical efficiency.   
     “This is going to need stitches,” she warned him, cleaning her washcloth in the bowl.  
     “No thank you,” he growled back, leaning away from her.  “Just wrap it.”  
     She threw the washcloth down, splashing bloody water over the table.  “Fine.  What sort of a headstone would you like?”  
     He looked at her in surprise.  Color mottled her cheeks and frustration was written plainly across her face.  But there was something almost… vulnerable in her eyes.  “Have you ever given someone stitches before?” he demanded hotly.  
     “Of course I have!” she burst out, “I—” she broke off and strangely something shattered behind her eyes.  “Look I know what I’m doing.”  She reached out and traced her fingers over the gash.  The pain in his side immediately eased.  “Can you feel that?” she demanded.  
     He stared at the bloody gash in surprise.  “No,” he admitted, though he could clearly see her fingers touching the torn edge of the wound.  “What did you do?”  
     “I didn’t, Tutu did.”  She sighed wearily and he saw that she had had one hand closed around her pendant.  She picked up the needle and thread.  “Just let me do this, okay?”  
     He held her eyes for a second before deciding to trust her.  Resting his elbow on the table, he leaned back and watched as she concentrated on her work.  Whatever she’d done had numbed his side.  He couldn’t feel anything now except the occasional brush of her fingertips.  “How do you know how to do this?” he asked curiously.  
     She paused uncertainly, the needle hovering in her hand.  “I don’t know,” she said after a moment of silence.  She frowned, “Sometimes I just know things and I don’t know how I know them.  Like when I’m Tutu and I can dance perfectly, but when I’m me I can’t.”  
     “That is weird,” he agreed, gazing toward the window.  Outside a flock of crows circled over the town and Fakhir recalled fighting Mytho, and Aria leaping between them.  He remembered the look on Mytho’s face when he’d tried to strike the girl.  _What was that expression?_ He wondered.  _And why just then did I have the urge to kill him before he could hurt her when I couldn’t strike at him before?  
_      “Sit up straight,” she told him suddenly.  “I need to wrap this to keep it clean.  But be careful, I don’t want you ripping out my work.”  
     He bit back the need to retort and obeyed her.  She had a length of linen in her hands and scooted closer, wrapping it over her stitches around his ribs.  Fakhir was suddenly painfully aware of her proximity, her hands sliding over his skin as she worked.  He could feel the warmth radiating off her as she leaned close.  He ground his teeth together, clenching his hands into fists.  
     Completely unaware of his discomfort, Aria finished her work and straightened up, her wide blue eyes meeting his.  Their faces were only inches apart and Fakhir had to fight the strange compulsion to lean down and close that distance.  _What the hell??  
_      Then to his surprise she made the choice for both of them, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around his neck.  He tensed suddenly, all of his thoughts scattering.  “I’m sorry,” she murmured in his ear.  
     “For what?” he asked, voice strained.  He was _not_ prepared for this!  
     “Rachel told me.  About your  parents,” she whispered back.  “I shouldn’t have asked you to write a story.  I shouldn’t have said anything.  I’m so sorry.”  
     Struggling to gather his wits, Fakhir wrapped his arms around her not sure whether he was going to push her away or pull her closer until he felt something wet fall onto the bare skin of his shoulder.  _Is she crying?_    
     All other thoughts suddenly vanished.  “It’s not your fault,” he told her soothingly.  
     “It is,” she choked out.  “I’m the one who started restoring the Prince’s heart.  This all started because of me.”  
     His eyes fluttered closed at the anguish in her voice.  He hadn’t realized, he hadn’t even _considered_ the guilt Aria must be feeling.   
     She pulled away from him wiping tears off her cheeks.  “You could have been killed today,” she sniffed, “and that would have been my fault too.”  
     “Nonsense,” he dismissed her concern.  “I knew what I was getting into.  You’re not responsible for the whole world, Aria.”  
     “Then why does it feel like I am?”  Her eyes looked up at him beseechingly and he had to fight the urge to fold her into his arms until all such ridiculous notions were forgotten.  _What the hell is happening to me?  
_      “I think I’ll try it,” he heard himself saying.  
     “Try what?” she frowned.  
     “Writing a story about Mytho.”  He blinked in surprise at his own words, but as she stared at him in shock before her face broke into a beautiful smile, he wondered if he would have promised her anything to keep that smile on her face.  
     “You don’t have to,” she murmured cautiously.  
     “I want to,” he assured her.  
     In her sudden enthusiasm she hugged him again.  
 _Mytho’s,_ he reminded himself firmly.  _She’s Mytho’s princess.  
_ _Not yours._


	16. Der wunderliche Spielmann

_**The Wondrous Musician** _

 

     The door to the smithy opened and Kyron entered, bending to remove his muddy boots before stepping fully into the cozy front room that formed the majority of the building’s living space.  Fakhir didn’t even look up from where he sat by the crackling fire in the stove, tapping a pen idly against the piece of paper he was sketching absently on.  
     The blacksmith’s eyes swept across the room from where Uzura was drawing quietly in the corner, to where Fakhir was sitting, to the table he hadn’t bothered to clear this afternoon after Aria left.  Kyron’s eyebrows went up and he crossed to the bowl with its bloody water.  “What happened here?”  
     Fakhir glanced his way and grimaced.  
     Kyron, noting his reaction, looked around again and saw the Lohengrin sword still propped in the corner.  He made a sound in his throat and crossed the room, dropping into the second chair by the stove.  He folded his hands on his lap, staring at the flames licking at the stove’s window.  “Should I even ask who was injured?”  
     “It’s nothing,” Fakhir answered shortly.  
     “Nothing which required stitching?”  
     _Damn his ever-observant eyes._   Fakhir growled.  
     Kyron’s lips twitched.  “Does this nothing have anything to do with that sword standing in the corner?”  
     Swallowing back a sigh, Fakhir twirled the pen through his fingers.  “How much do you really want to know?”  
     The blacksmith quirked a brow at him.  “If I asked for the whole story, would you give it to me?”  
     He couldn’t lie.  “Probably not.”  There were some things—like the bookmen—Fakhir simply couldn’t tell Kyron.  
     After a long pause, Kyron sighed.  “I didn’t teach you how to use that sword just so that you could go out and get yourself hurt.  Or worse.”  
     Fakhir swallowed a sigh.  _That’s the problem.  You aren’t the only one who taught me how to use that sword._ “I don’t go out looking for fights,” he protested darkly.  
     “No,” the blacksmith mused, “though if I recall correctly, you never failed to find one.”  Fakhir didn’t answer him.  “Does this have anything to do with that girl I met today?”  
     Startling, Fakhir swung his head around to look his guardian in the eye. “What?”  
     A small smile was playing around Kyron’s mouth.  “In all these years, the only ‘friend’ you ever brought home was the prince,” he gently reminded.  
     Fakhir wanted to growl again, but Kyron was right.  “It’s complicated,” he admitted at last.  
     “You’ve taken the role of the knight in the story,” Kyron shrugged matter-of-factly.  “She’s taken the role of Tutu.”  
     Fakhir dropped his pen and it rolled unnoticed across the floor. “What!?”  
     The blacksmith appeared amused.  “I am not a stupid man, Fakhir.  Whatever else you might think.”  
     “I never said you were,” he defended hotly.  
     Kyron only laughed.  
     “Why you?” Fakhir asked suddenly.  “Anyone else who was affected directly by the story and encountered Tutu has forgotten anything ever happened.  Why didn’t you?”  
     His expression turned thoughtful.  “Perhaps because I already know the story, and that this town has been affected by it.”  He shrugged, “Or maybe for some far more nefarious reason.  I’ve never actually thought about it.”  
     Fakhir harrumphed.  
     “So it’s the girl then that has you all twisted out of shape this evening?”  
     Declining to answer, Fakhir searched about for his pen without finding it.  
     “Definitely the girl,” Kyron summed up, laughter in his voice.  
     “It’s nothing.”  
     “What was her name again?”  
     “I said it’s nothing!” Fakhir snapped.  
     Kyron laughed again, but to Fakhir’s relief he didn’t press it.  Instead he stood and busied himself with cleaning up.  
     After several minutes Fakhir couldn’t bear the silence any longer.  “She asked me to write a story.”  
     Kyron slowly set down the now-clean bowl and turned to face him.  “Write a story?  Or rewrite _the_ story?”  
     “Is there a difference?”  
     He nodded at the page Fakhir still held, “Is that what you’re trying to do?”  
     “Not with any efficacy,” he sighed wearily.  “Any time I try, my hand simply won’t move the pen.  And if I force it, the words that end up on the page aren’t the ones I intended to write.”  
     Straightening, Kyron held out his hand, “Let me see.”  
     Fakhir mutely passed the page over.  
     Kyron’s brow wrinkled as he scanned the brief paragraph scrawled there.  To Fakhir’s discomfort, he read it aloud.  “Once upon a time, there was a man who died.  All the stories the man spun came true.  So the king, the nobility and the kingdom’s rich all went to him, to get him to write them stories.  But when they saw their wishes granted, stark terror of his power seized them, and they began to abhor him.  When the man finally died, the people rejoiced that this wellspring of misfortune had dried up.  No one heard the echoing sound of the dead man’s scorned laughter.”  
     Fakhir scowled.  
     Kyron lowered the page and stared at Fakhir for a long minute.  “This just wrote itself?”

***

_“Checkmate.”  
     A flash of light and a flare of pain punctuated the word.  _No, no, no! _It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  She just wanted to save the prince, she never meant for it to go this far.  A hot feeling spread out from her heart and the tang of iron filled her mouth.  She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as the world around her sheeted white._ _  
“NOO!”  
    The sound of the prince’s anguished cry pierced her more surely than any weapon ever could.  She could see him kneeling on a checkerboard floor, the hilt of his sword braced against the tiles as he prepared to shatter his heart.  She couldn’t let him, couldn’t let him destroy himself simply to save her.  Dropping her chin, she saw the bloody tip of the poniard protruding from her chest, holding her in place.  
     “Did you really think you could beat me, little duck?”   
     The harsh voice grating in her ears was familiar, so familiar… She struggled to place it but couldn’t come up with a name or a face.  She itched to strike back at him, but her body wouldn’t—couldn’t obey her.  
     “Yours wasn’t the heart that I wanted, but I’ll gladly take it all the same.”  
     Then the pain in her chest blossomed into something a thousand times worse and she was released from the pin holding her in place as surely as a bug in a display case.  Strings cut she flew, floated, fell… she never hit the ground.  Something caught her, held her, like a golden net to wrap her up and bear her safely away.  Only there was no safety left anymore.  
     _My fault.  All my fault.  
  _Tears mixed with blood and she knew, she’d always known… this was how the story was meant to end._

 

     Aria jerked awake with a cry, her hand flying to her heart and the phantom of pain that lingered there.  Cold sweat soaked the sheets tangled around her legs, and she gasped for air while the sensation of drowning faded slowly from her mind.  Moaning, she drew her knees up to her chest and shoved damp curls off her forehead before pressing her face to her knees.   
     “It was just a dream,” she assured herself.  Just _the_ dream.  Again.  She ran her fingertips over the small scar on her chest, right under where her pendant lay.  Ever since it appeared the dream had haunted her.  The first night she’d shrugged off her restless dreams as a result of her encounter with the dark prince.  The second night she’d tossed and turned until dawn, waking groggily from barely remembered dreams.  By the third night…  
     “Just a dream,” she murmured again.  Except that in the night every time she closed her eyes it returned with brutal intensity, so real and so visceral that she woke each time as she did now with the phantom pain still flowering in her chest.  She’d barely slept all night.  And though exhaustion pulled at her limbs, Aria had no desire to attempt sleep again.  She turned her head, resting a cheek against her knee, and stared toward the window.  
     Opalescent light filtered in at an angle, filling the little loft room of the girl’s dormitory with a soft radiance.  There was magic in that twilight between night and day, before the harsh angles of the world were fully revealed, after the insidious mystery of night, when anything could still be possible.  Shadows lifted from the floor, banished to the corners and edges of the world by the coming dawn.  _Yet some shadows cannot be banished by the light._    
     Aria sat there in the mess of her blankets, her apricot curls a curtain of hair pooling over her shoulders in tangled waves.  She stared sightlessly at the far corner of the room, watching the slow play of light and shadow without really seeing it.  
     “I’ve returned the last wandering shard of Mytho’s heart, I don’t know where or how to find the rest.  He said he knew where they were, that he didn’t need me anymore.  Is there anything Tutu can do to save him?”  Her thoughts turned to Fakhir and she wondered if he really was going to write a story about Mytho.  She wondered if he’d tried yet.  Maybe he would be successful.  Maybe he could save Mytho and the prince could go back into the story, and the town would go back to being a normal town, and she… she would go back to being a duck.  And all she’d have to do is sit back on the sidelines and watch.  Maybe.  Because…  
     “I don’t know what else I can do.”  
     Her fingers rubbed over the scar again and she wondered about the dream.  _Is that what really happened to Tutu in the story?_   She shuddered.  
     _Maybe it’s a good thing it’s just a story._  
     Throwing back the tangled sheets she gave up on sleep and climbed out of bed.  Joylessly she went through her usual morning routine.  Not even the birds could shake the shadows from her mind as they chirruped happily over their bowl of bread.  Only a few girls were stirring in their rooms when she lumbered gracelessly down the stairs.  Weariness tugged on her thanks to the sleepless night and her legs felt like lead.  Every step took twice the effort it should.  Wandering out into the courtyard she stared at the pas de deux fountain for a moment.  Her thoughts shifted back to that day that seemed so long ago when she’d saved Mytho from falling.  The first time.  Her eyes narrowed.  She’d seen something there by the fountain that day, hadn’t she?  The memory tugged elusively at her mind.  A face.  _Her_ face.  Not her face.  
     White light flared dimly behind her eyes, a dull pain stabbed at her temples.  It wasn’t enough to wipe out the recollection.  She _had_ seen herself there.  Not her now, but her before.  
     _W_ _ait, what?_  
     Pain lanced through her, a sharp stabbing agony that pierced through her chest and robbed her of breath.  She went to her knees, bracing against the ground as she gasped for air.  The world around her sheeted white through the agony pinning her in place.  As fast as it came it was gone and Aria was left reeling.   
     “Get out of the way, twat.”  
     Startled by the nearness of the words, Aria panicked and spun around, still on her knees.  Heidi stood behind her wearing a loose top and long running shorts, staring down her nose with an expression of disgusted contempt.  
     “What are you even doing?” the girl sneered.  
     Wordlessly, Aria cast about for an explanation but was left bereft.  
     “Useless good-for-nothing,” the senior student sniffed.  “It baffles me why they even let riffraff like you stay at this school.  I have half a mind to complain to my father.  Poor, talentless fools like you just bring down the rest of the class.  Can’t you tell when you’re not wanted, _Duck?”_   Then she sniffed again and shoved bodily past Aria toward her morning exercise.  
     Dumbfounded by the unprecedented verbal attack, Aria just stared after the girl until she’d disappeared out the dorm gates.  Then she shook her head.  Of all the things going on around her, school bullies were the least of her problems.  Still, Heidi’s words struck a chord inside her… _useless good-for-nothing._  
     Shaken, she closed a hand over her pendant.  “Is that all I am now?”

***

     “Still at the fairytales?”  
     Fakhir scowled at the school librarian as he passed over a tall pile of books to check in.  “Nothing to check out today,” he muttered.  “Just turning these back in.”  
     The batty old man who staffed the desk pushed his half-moon spectacles up his nose and squinted at the titles etched on the leather bindings.  “Quite the collection you’ve been through, young man.”  
     He snorted.  _Quite the collection indeed._   His fingers closed over the folded piece of paper in his pocket on which he’d recorded the pertinent lines from each tome—the ones which referenced a prince or a raven.  There was a story in these books, and it wasn’t the ones they seemed to tell.  What the story meant, however, he had no clue.  There were still pieces missing, and even if he found them all, Fakhir wondered if it would be of any use to him at all.  “Is there any way to locate books in the library catalog by publisher?”  
     The ancient librarian blinked at him a couple of times.  “No…” he drawled thoughtfully, “books can only be looked up by author, title, or subject in the catalog.”  Then his watery eyes narrowed, “What is it you’re looking for, son?”  
     Huffing, Fakhir chafed at the inconvenience.  He’d been through so many books in the vast library, still he’d barely scratched the surface of what was contained here.  “All the books printed by VR Publishing.”  
     Nodding thoughtfully, the old man scratched at his leathery ear.  “They were a small publishing firm, if I recall.  Based out of Schwangau, founded in the late nineteenth century.  They closed down shortly before the war.  They specialized in macabre fairy tales of the likes of Grimm.”  
     Fakhir froze, staring at the old man in utter disbelief.  “How do you know that?”  
     The librarian shrugged and gestured around at the stacks as if that was an answer.  
     Shaking himself, Fakhir fought the urge to grab the man by the lapels and demand information.  Forcing politeness, he asked, “Do you by any chance know how many of those books we have here?”  
     “Oh, all of them if I’m not mistaken,” the librarian informed him.  He placed a hand on the pile of books, “You’ve been through most of them these past few weeks.  There’s only—” he broke off, making a face, “hmm.”  Eyes dropping to the desk between them, the old man searched among it for only-he-knew-what.  “Ah! Yes, here it is!”  Rifling through a pile of papers under the desk, the old man came up with a book Fakhir had yet to read.  “This one.  This and _Der Prinz und Der Rabe_ are the only ones you haven’t checked out.”  
     Cautiously accepting the book, Fakhir stared suspiciously at the old man.  “And you just happened to have this sitting behind the desk?”  
     “No, no, no,” he chuckled as if at some great joke.  “A young man left that here for you, I’ve been holding on to it until you came back.”  
     Jolting, Fakhir clutched the book in white-knuckled hands.  “Who?”  
     “Young Autor from the music division.  He’s been through all the VR Publishing books as well.  He said you might be interested in this one.”  
     Fakhir’s blood ran cold.  _Who the hell is Autor?_  
     “If you’re looking for him, you can usually find him in the music school.  It’s where he is when he’s not here.  He plays the piano, and generally practices alone.”  The surprisingly helpful librarian lifted the pile of books in his wiry arms and shuffled away as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on Fakhir’s world.  
     Tucking the stray book into his bag, Fakhir turned on his heel and left the library.  On the steps he looked toward the music school on the southwest corner of campus.  To Fakhir’s knowledge, the only people in Goldkrone Towne who knew about the curse and the story outside of the primary characters were the bookmen and Kyron.  So why would this mysterious nobody student check out all of the books printed by some obscure publishing house in rural Bavaria which just so happened to contain a hidden story tied directly to the curse containing the town?  
     Determined to find out, Fakhir started across the quad toward the music and fine arts building.  There weren’t many students on the grounds at this time of day.  Those who didn’t have a free period were attending their last class before the afternoon release.  So there was no one around to wonder why Fakhir was venturing into the large block-like building on the edge of campus.  He located the stairs and ascended to the second floor where most of the music rooms were housed.  Strains of different tunes warred against each other as Fakhir wandered down the hall looking into the various classes.  Strings and brass, percussion and woodwind, and the odd chorale voice or two combated discordantly together in the hallway where their various melodies intermingled.  The sound of a piano drew his attention near the end of the hall, and he turned toward a slightly open door.   
     A baby grand piano sat in the middle of the room, bathed in late afternoon light streaming from several floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall.  A young bespectacled man sat masterfully playing a Prokofiev piece from Romeo and Juliet, and though he faced the door, he didn’t look up when Fakhir entered.  He continued playing, hammering the keys out in a loud and jarring metronomic melody, seemingly unaware of his observer as he struck the dark tune from the very bones of the instrument, holding out the final chord of the first theme in decisive victory.   
     The empty room seemed to take a breath in the brief pause of silence which followed, and then the pianist began the second theme much quieter than before.  His eyes flicked up and met Fakhir’s.  “You’re late,” he announced, still playing softly.  “It took you eighteen days, seven hours, and twenty-four minutes.”  
     Fakhir’s eyes narrowed, “What are you talking about?”  
     “That’s how long it took from the time you began to research your power to when you noticed me.”  
     “So you’re Autor,” Fakhir confirmed.  
     Autor’s hands never stopped moving over the keys, “Not a very smart one, are you?” he patronized.  
     Fakhir ground his teeth together, even as Autor turned his attention back to his playing, the music picking gradually up in volume until it filled the room once more.  _“Montagues and Capulets,”_ Fakhir named the piece.  
     Autor smirked and struck the keys one last resounding blow and the final notes of the song shivered in the air around him.  “Also known as the Knight’s Dance.”  He pushed away from the piano and stood, “Fakhir.”  
     Tensing at the obvious innuendo, Fakhir reached into his bag and withdrew the book.  “What is this about?”  
     “I assumed you hadn’t read it, so I set it aside.  I think you’ll find it useful for when you start writing your stories.”  
     “Oh really?” Fakhir growled, “And what do you know about it?”  
     Autor laughed defiantly, a gleeful expression upon his face.  “Everything you’ve been dying to know.”  
     Fakhir’s interest piqued and he took a step toward the impertinent boy.  “Tell me.”

***

     “Not like that!”  
     Ms. Ziegenfuss’s voice rang through the studio stridently, bringing the pointe class to a sudden, crashing halt.  She strode forward, right up to where Aria was standing at the barre.  “Miss Arima, how long have you been practicing pointe?”  
     “Uh…”  
     “And how many times do we have to go over the same basic things?”  
     Heat flooded Aria’s face, “I—”  
     The instructor folded her arms over her chest.  “At least you used to _try_ in class, Miss Arima, but lately it’s as if you’ve even lost your eagerness to do _that_ much.  It’s almost painful watching you.”  
     A snicker from the far side of the room drew her attention and Aria saw Heidi standing with a group of senior students, a big grin plastered across her face.  Not far away stood Rue, staring aloofly in her direction.  The ballerina raised a single dark eyebrow.  
     “I can’t decide if you don’t care anymore of if you’ve resolved you’ll never succeed and so you’ve stopped trying,” Ms. Ziegenfuss went brutally on.  
     Aria’s gaping mouth snapped shut.  
     “If you’re not even going to try, Miss Arima, you may leave.”  Extending one gracefully long arm, the instructor pointed imperiously to the door.  
     “But I—”  
     “Now.”  
     Heart heavy, feeling the weight of the other girls’ stares like chains, Aria made the long walk to the door.  She wanted to object to Ms. Ziegenfuss’s ruling, but wasn’t her teacher right?  Asking Fakhir to do her job for her as Tutu… was that the same thing as giving up?  
     _Yes,_ her own inner voice admonished.  
     “Shut up,” she muttered.  
     Dejected, she shuffled down the stairs to the locker room and changed.  Her limbs felt heavy with fatigue, weariness tugged at her, and it was no surprise that Ms. Ziegenfuss had expelled her from the studio.  Thanks to her sleepless nights she could barely stand upright let alone dance.  During the showcase it hadn’t mattered, but the showcase was over.  
     The quad was empty of people when she exited the ballet school, all the other students and professors being in their last class of the day.  She didn’t look back, but she could still feel the eyes of those in the practice studio looking down on her as she crossed the barren quad.  Lost in her own dark thoughts as she headed for the gate, she almost didn’t see the cloaked figure of a man darting around the music building.  A flash of shadow drew her attention and she froze, staring at the impossible sight of a man walking around the narrow ledge on the second floor of the building just as he disappeared around the corner.  
     “What the…”  
     Adjusting the strap of her bookbag, Aria picked up speed.  She made it around the corner of the building just in time to see the shadow of a man peering through a window on the second floor.  “Hey!” she cried out.  
     The man’s cloaked head turned in her direction, but his face was shrouded in darkness.  Seeing her, he turned and leapt into the branches of a tree, then to the crown of the school’s wall, disappearing over the edge to the sound of a distant splash.  
     Blinking, Aria gaped at the impossible feat.  She glanced at the window the man had been spying through.  _What’s in there?_  
     “Only one way to find out.”  
     Ignoring the fact that she was holding conversations with herself, she turned and hurried inside and up the stairs.  The man had been at the furthest end of the building, so he had to be looking through the last room on the right.  She hastened down the hallway hoping some rogue music professor wouldn’t call her out for not being in class, and paused by the half open door at the end.  She was surprised to hear Fakhir’s voice.  
     _What?_  
     “I’m asking you to tell me who you are,” Fakhir didn’t sound happy.  
     “You’re as short-tempered as everyone says you are,” a vaguely familiar voice answered.   
     Aria peered around the edge of the door and spied a familiar bespectacled face.  _The boy from the library?_ She racked her memory for his name.  _Autor._  
     “But remember this,” the boy said, “brute force has no power in the face of words.  You want Drosselmeyer’s power because you’re aware of that truth, yes?”  
     Shock froze her in place.  _Drosselmeyer’s power?_  
     Autor’s grin turned wicked.  “The power to make stories into reality.  It’s magnificent.”  His chin came up, and there was an almost manic glee in his eyes.  “And the books that have all had their endings stolen by those who wish to stop them from becoming reality…”  
     Fakhir scowled at the bespectacled boy, and though he stood seemingly casually facing him with one hand tucked in his pocket, Aria could see the tension in his shoulders.  He looked about ready to charge across the room and shake Autor.  Or worse.  
     “…isn’t it thrilling?”  
     “You mean they took out the endings to stop them from becoming real?” Fakhir sounded less than thrilled.  Under his breath he muttered, “Bastards.”  
     Aria was pretty sure she was the only one who heard him.  
     Autor took an excited step forward.  “Yes!” he enthused.  “Even though the originals are sealed away, and all we can get hold of are the copies.  Imagine a power so strong those endings _still_ had to be torn out!”  
     Aria wasn’t entirely certain what they were talking about, but that sounded… horrible.  Judging from the expression on Fakhir’s face, he agreed with her.  
     “If you’re serious about attaining that power, I wouldn’t mind helping you,” Autor droned on, “but you will have to follow my every order, and be prepared to die if you should fail.”  
     Chills froze Aria’s blood in her veins.  _Die?_ She ground her teeth together, _not on my watch!_   Bursting into the room, she threw her bookbag down.  “What do you mean?” she demanded hotly.  
     Fakhir startled and turned toward her, pressing a fist to his lips.  Autor just glared.  
     “ _‘Follow my every order?’”_ she mimicked.  “‘ _Be prepared to die?’_  What the hell are you talking about?  Why should he have to do any of those things!?”  
     Autor advanced a step, “I am giving him a warning!”  His gaze switched to Fakhir and he took another, almost menacing step.  “Do not take Drosselmeyer’s power lightly.  If you use it improperly there will be hell to pay.  People may even die.  You need to be prepared for that possibility.”  
     “No!” she exclaimed, running forward and placing herself like a shield between them.  Hot white light flared in her head.  The image of Mytho kneeling on a checkerboard floor with the point of his sword against his heart seared in her brain.  Pain arrowed through her chest, robbing her of breath.  Fakhir’s hand landing on her shoulder wiped the memory of the image and the pain away, but left her shaken.  
     Autor shrugged as if he didn’t care.  “If you want out, I won’t force you.”  
     Twisting to see Fakhir’s face, she opened her mouth to object.  
     “No,” he overruled her.  “Teach me.”  
     “Fakhir!” she gasped.  
     His hand on her shoulder tightened, telling her without words that he wasn’t nearly as calm as he appeared.  
     “A wise decision,” Autor gloated.  He stepped past both of them and headed for the door.  “Come to my house tomorrow.  I’ll be waiting… Fakhir.”  
     Only when he disappeared did Fakhir release her, and Aria rounded on him ready for a fight.  His expression, however, was resolute. “What was he talking about, Fakhir?  Who was that?  What did he mean by Drosselmeyer’s power?”  
     Sighing wearily, he turned away.  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”


End file.
